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We have been working for some time on a cytotaxonomical review of the
arctic flora, similar to the chromosome list which we published in
1961 for the flora of northwest and central Europe. This checklist will
not only give complete listings of all the biological species and sub-
species of the entire circumpolar arctic flora, with simple designations
of their distribution as in our Scandinavian chromosome list from 1948,
but also informations on synonymy, and references to all publications on
chromosome numbers of the taxa listed with a critical evaluation when
appropriate. This work is being done by aid of the modern retrieval methods
of Dr. David J. Rogers of the Taximetrics Laboratory of the Department of
Biology, in connection with the creation of a complete data bank on all
plant chromosome numbers published. The arctic list certainly will be
useful as a manual for other cytotaxonomists and phytogeographers, at
the same time as it will be a gold mine for those who want to study various
aspects of chromosome numbers and polyploidy and their connections with
various phytogeographical phenomena.

No checklist has ever been made of the strictly alpine plants of the
mountains in the boreal zone in either hemisphere. Since we have spent
considerable time on studying the cytotaxonomy of such plants in western
Eurasia and eastern North America before commencing our present work in
western North America, we are composing such a list, in order to be able to
add to it chromosome information in a way similar to that mentioned for
the Arctic. We do not expect to be able to complete even a preliminary
list for all the boreal alpine plants for several years to come, but are
first trying to complete such lists for more limited parts of the area.
We have published preliminarily on the cytotaxonomy of the alpine plants of
Mt. Washington, N.H., and a book by Doris Löve reviewing the constitution
of that flora and our background studies of its evolutionary history is
in a completed manuscript which still waits for support for publication.
However, most of our work in the Rocky Mountains is still at a preliminary
stage and only partially published.

It is our intention to use a small part of the support asked for in
this proposal to work on these chromosome lists and the chromosome number
bank, and to complete some of the studies which we have made in other areas
and not yet published. Most of the support will, however, be used for
intensive and detailed investigations of the arctic-alpine and montane
plants of the southern Rocky Mountains and their evolutionary relationships