Charales of China

This article gives an overview of the literature on charophytes of the Peop les Republic of China. Also, a list of all charophytes found in the country so far, is presented. The list follows Han & Li (1994). In total 159 diffe rent species and 44 different varieties of charophytes are known from China . The number of species in each genus is (number of endemic species in brac kets): Nitella 90 (40), Tolypella 6(3), Nitellopsis I, Lamprothamnium 1, Ly chnothamnus 2(1) and Chara 59(26). The geographical distribution of each ge nus is shown.