Valia (Valentine) Selitsky Allorge (1888–1977) was a Russian-French botanist, phycologist, and bryologist known for studying the flora of the Pyrenees region. Allorge's most important work was on the bryoflora of the Bussaco forest, Portugal, and she also spent several years cataloguing the bryophytes of Spain.[1] [2]
She was born in the Russian Empire and emigrated to Nice in France before the start of World War I.[3] She studied in Switzerland and then at the University of Paris. At the University of Paris she worked in the lab of Gaston Bonnier. It was also at the University of Paris she met her first husband, C.-L. Gatin, who was a botanist. He was killed as a soldier in the French Army in World War I in 1916.[4]
In 1920 she married Pierre Allorge. Her husband was the editor of Revue Bryologique, which she continued to edit after his death.[5] Together with P. Allorge she issued several series of bryophyte exsiccatae in the time span between 1928 and 1949.[6]