This paper presents an enumeration and classification of the pteridophytes which are known to occur naturally in Tasmania. Authorities are cited for specific names and binomials, and publication data are set out in connection with each species. Basic synonyms are noted, and there is indicated also the manner in which each species was dealt with in the following five major botanical works: -Novae Hollandiae plantarum specimen-Part 2, by J. J. Labillardiere (1806). -Prodromus Florae Novae-Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, by Robert Brown (810). -Flora Tasmaniae-Part 2, by J. D. Hooker (860). -Flora Australiensis-Part 7, by George Bentham 0878l. -The Tasmanian Flora, by Leonard Rodway (903). The arrangement used is that set out for the Pteridophyta in the Cambridge University publication, A Classification of Plants (1938), with however, the "Polypodiaceae" (as in that work) divided up into the families suggested by A. H. G. Alston in the paper entitled "The Subdivision of the Polypodiaceae" in Taxon. 52: 23-25 (1956). Neither diagnoses nor distribution data are included here, for they are available, together with illustrations of each species, in the book Ferns of Victoria and Tasmania*, to which the present paper is complementary. [In this book however, a major part of the classification is on the lines set out by R E. Holttum in "A revised classification of the Leptosporangiate ferns", in Journ. Linn. Soc. London 53: 123-158 (947).] The 83 local species are probably satisfactorily delimitated now, but the nomenclature of some of them requires further study and some adjustment.
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Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania