Biography

Russian botanist interested in the flora of Siberia and far-east Russia. Dimitri Litvinov worked as a curator and researcher at the Botanical Museum (vascular plant section) of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg from 1898. In the first part of the 20th century he joined I.P. Borodin on many expeditions to the far-east and from this work they were responsible for the Flora of Siberia and the Far East (1913-1931). Only nine parts of this work were published covering five flowering plant families, before the merger of the museum and botanic garden into the Botanical Institute when the project was abandoned and replaced with that of the Flora SSSR. Later Litvinov worked extensively in the St. Petersburg region and the Kola Peninsula studying their respective floras in the field. Litvinov was responsible for the publication of the Bibliography of the Siberian Flora (1904) and for editing the 4th and 5th editions of P.F. Maevsky's Flora of Middle Russia (1912, 1917). He also espoused two theories on the boreal flora in his earlier years, one on relic mountain pine forests of European Russia and the other, that the Arctic flora was derived from an alpine flora in more southerly montane regions.

Sources:
S.G. Shetler, 1967, The Komarov Botanical Institute
A.I. Kafanov and V.A. Kudrjashov, Classics of general biogeography : a biobibliographic directory:
http://biogeographers.dvo.ru/pages/0160.htm.