#: locale=en-GB
## Tour
### Descrizione
tour.description = ODO is a virtual tour, a journey through a room of the Italian Central Herbarium | Botany collections, Museum of Natural History, University of Florence.
### Titolo
tour.name = ODO: journey through the Herbarium | Museum System - University of Florence
## Skin
### Pulsante
Button_33E05EBD_2656_F9E6_41B7_F7BDEA9F8FF2.label = Credits
Button_3FF2A349_30C5_6FE0_41A1_9364685E8247.label = Herbarium sample
Button_640C30C2_6BE8_AB7F_41D2_B0721B977651.label = Take a picture!
Button_A45270E8_AA00_533B_41C7_DAFD27D7F87E.label = Share
Button_A85A6447_B3FB_20EE_41D4_2003FA8F42FA.label = ENG
Button_A86B8C64_B3FB_20A2_41B4_A56BE3436A18.label = FRA
Button_A892AF85_B3FB_2062_41D6_54FC47AEC64D.label = ESP
Button_A9A851AE_B3FF_23BE_41D3_6CED23EFFFBD.label = ITA
Button_B3DA97A6_A997_F2B9_41DC_73E46A716C36.label = DISCOVER
Button_E0196459_F333_CDDC_41D3_4F146FB84D6F.label = Contact
Button_E1DE00F5_F330_C6D4_41D2_410AFD9B0F7B.label = Photogallery
Button_E24CDBDE_F333_BAD4_41E0_CF0D78286D20.label = From "field" to herbarium
### Testo Multilinea
HTMLText_080B738F_2998_81D6_41A0_B465A953D309.html = Assembly
Place each sample on a sheet of paper (such as white, pH-neutral Bristol board) and secure it by placing a few strips of adhesive tape or pins.
Leave a space at the bottom right of the sheet where the label can be applied, on which all the data marked during the collection phase should be written: collector, location, type of vegetation, soil, date, etc.
Disinfestation
Once the sample is dry, any insects that might destroy it shortly thereafter must be removed. The best method is to keep it in the freezer (-28 °C) for about 10-15 days.
To avoid "surprises", samples should be kept in a suitable environment even after the first treatment: for small herbaria, repellents such as camphor or, even better, natural ones such as thymol may be sufficient. For medium or large ones, the best way is to keep the rooms refrigerated, enough to prevent insect growth (approx. 18 °C).
Today, fortunately, it is no longer possible to use poisonous (e.g., methyl bromide) or flammable (e.g. carbon disulfide) materials, as it was done in the past, because they are dangerous, both for the samples and for those who have to handle them!
Drying
Once the collection is complete, place each sample on a sheet of newspaper and compose a package, taking care to apply labels with information about the collec-tion. You will then take care to close the package with wooden boards or cardboard and cotton straps.
It is necessary to press down on the package so that the plants will lie flat and begin their dehydration by mechanical means. After 24 hours, all newspapers should be replaced with dry ones to prevent mold growth. The paper change will continue over the next few days at increasingly sparser intervals. Complete drying is usually achieved 10-40 days after harvest, depending on the material and season.
At each change of paper, you can change the ar-rangement of samples and parts: you can spread the leaves and gently open the flowers, avoid overlapping parts of the sample, turn the leaves when they have particular structures on the lower side, etc.
Some interesting facts:
- Sometimes specimens can easily lose their leaves and/or flowers during drying (conifers and heath-ers, for example). In such cases, a fixative such as cup varnish can be used, indicating this on a sam-ple label. Alternatively, the process of "leaf ab-scission" can be stopped by heat, for example by boiling the plant before drying it.
- Succulents take months to dry out: soaking them in boiling water first can speed up the process!
- To prevent mold attack, samples can be treated with denatured alcohol.
Identification
A plant collection has value in itself because of the permanent association of the natural specimen with the label bearing its collection data. However, it takes on its scientific meaning only when each find is identi-fied.
To do so, it may be necessary to note some of its characteristics while it is still fresh, but generally her-barium specimens "speak" to botanists even many years after preparation. This is definitely good news: it doesn't limit the time of collecting more specimens too much, and most importantly, it makes sense of the herbarium as a place to physically store specimens!
Herbarium specimens are often studied with a good lens or small stereoscopic microscope and handled with a pair of stamp tweezers to avoid breaking them. If it is necessary to examine the details of an organ (flower, fruit, seed etc.), it can be immersed in boiling water to rehydrate it and facilitate its manipulation.
For the identification it is often necessary to consult suitable texts that, through special analytical keys, help the recognition. Once we have identified our sample, we transcribe its name on the label, along with that of the author and the date of identification.
In this way, over the course of time, each single herbarium sheet can become a small archive in which the testimonies of all those who have examined and evaluated it are stratified.
This and other rooms in the Botany collections may be visited for Research purposes: more information.
For more information about the virtual space ODO and updates on new content you can write to comunicazione(AT)adm.unifi.it
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You are in the heart of the Italian Central Herbarium, the largest in Italy and among the first in the world for number of specimens. This is one of the six rooms where it is housed.
The Italian Central Herbarium (Herbarium Centrale Italicum - HCI) is part of the Botany collections of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence. All the Botany collections of the University Museum System are in Via della Pira 4 in a space that is at once delicate and sensitive to external agents: the collections are open to the public only for Research purposes.
The establishment of an Italian Central Herbarium dates to pre-unity Italy, in 1842: it was a “national” museum before the birth of the Nation, a phenomenon that touches botany first, then geology, paleontology and zoology.
ODO, the virtual space to disseminate knowledge of the botanical collections of the University Museum System, has been developed by a collective of professionals that includes:
Sound: The Enchanted Forest di Roger Plexico, under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Acknowledgements go to the producers of the video shot as part of the Florintesa - Amori botanici project, reproduced as a clip in the display cabinet of the Italian Central Herbarium room.
Collection
Plants should not be ripped out, but collected with care and good sense! Each part intended for the her-barium cannot exceed the size of the sheet on which it will be mounted, i.e. about 30x45cm.
The most useful and valuable sample is the most complete one: when possible it should be collected with leaves, flowers or fruits, if necessary drawing from individuals in different stages of development.
From the field as a place of collection to the herbarium as a place of preservation: it is a journey of care that develops in several stages, bringing together many small material pieces into a single, large archive of knowledge.
1. Collection
2. Drying
3. Disinfection
4. Assembly
5. Identification
6. Archiving
Each person can become a witness and guardian of biodiversity through the establishment of a herbarium, for example.
Natura Collecta
Natura Exhibita
Archiving
Once the specimen is identified, it is stored in the her-barium so that it can be easily found when needed.
The criteria for 'physical' storage of the specimen may be different, but in any case it is always placed accord-ing to the name of the species, within the genus and family to which it belongs.
Further refinements of archiving may involve geo-graphic subdivision of samples of the same species, depending on the origin of the collection.
Of key importance is the archiving of data related to the samples, today more and more computerized and often made available to external users.
Natura Collecta
Natura Exhibita
Ordering scheme
in Italian Central Herbarium
Herbarium sheets are collected in different colored folders that are enclosed in packs.
The folders can be GRAY, WHITE or RED.
They are gray for Italian specimen, with one folder per region.
They are white for foreign specimens.
They are red for typus specimens ("types" are specimens on which a plant species is first described).
Biodiversity and Ecological Research in Herbarium
The specimen of cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) from the collections of Odoardo Beccari is one of the last documents testifying the presence of this plant in Tuscany, where it grew in a single station in what were once the Marshes of Bientina, between Lucca and Pisa.
Due to the vast reclamation that affected this wetland area, the species was already considered extinct at the end of the 19th century.
The specimen in question was donated in 1861 to the young Beccari by Pietro Savi, his professor of Botany at the University of Pisa, of which Odoardo became assistant, before abandoning this role for some misunderstandings with the Pisan botanist and moving to the University of Bologna, where he graduated with Antonio Bertoloni in 1864.
The botanical collections of the University Museum System include approximately 5 million specimens-no single researcher could ever match this wealth in the span of his or her lifetime!
From herbarium specimens collected in different places and times, information about environmental changes can be deduced: population growth, urbanization, land reclamation, opening of major communication roads, pollution, climate change, intensive agriculture, etc.
Human-induced environmental changes can cause the rarefaction or disappearance of many species or, conversely, encourage the appearance of exotic species.
The Museum System's samples document environmental changes through those of plant distribution over time and space: it is often not possible to do it any other way.
The cranberry,
an extinct plant in Tuscany
This specimen of the species Acaena magellanica be-longs to the Italian Central Herbarium
The specimen was collected by an English botanist, J. D. Hooker, a few years after the British colonialist settle-ment in the Malvinas Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean (1833) disputed by Argentina.
Date: 1839-1843
Location: Falkland or Malvinas Islands
Continent: The Americas
Folder: Joseph Dalton Hooker
Specimen: Acaena magellanica (Lam.) Vahl (formerly A. laevigata Ait., family ROSACEAE)
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There are over 4 million specimens in the Italian Central Herbarium in addition to this in the phanerogamic collections (seeded plants, which differ from the organisms without flowers and seeds collected in the cryptogamic collections). This specimen of Gyrocarpus americanus f. africanus be-longs to the Italian Central Herbarium
Date: 1870
Location: Northern Abyssinia, country of the Bogos
Country: Ethiopia
Continent: Africa
Folder: Odoardo Beccari
Specimen: Gyrocarpus americanus f. africanus Kubitzki (family HERNANDIACEAE)
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There are over 4 million specimens in the Italian Central Herbarium in addition to this in the phanerogamic collections (seeded plants, which differ from the organisms without flowers and seeds collected in the cryptogamic collections). This specimen of the species Magnolia mannii is part of the Italian Central Herbarium
Date: 1889
Location: Makum Forest, Assam State
Country: India (Northwestern)
Continent: Asia
Folder: Gustav Mann
Specimen: Magnolia mannii (King) Figlar (formerly Michelia mannii King; family MAGNOLIACEAE)
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There are over 4 million specimens in the Italian Central Herbarium in addition to this in the phanerogamic collections (seeded plants, which differ from the organisms without flowers and seeds collected in the cryptogamic collections). This type is part of the Central Italian Herbarium, a herbarium specimen used to describe for the first time the variety Romulea ramiflora var. violacea
The protagonists of the collection and identification are Emilio Levier, original owner of the specimen, and Stefano Sommier, a botanist and anthropologist. The sample is enriched by a lengthy annotation by Levier.
Date: 1894
Location: Giglio Island Capelrosso light and overhanging mountains
Country: Italy
Continent: Europe
Folders: Emilio Levier and Stefano Sommier
Type of: Romulea ramiflora var. violacea Sommier (family IRIDACEAE)
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There are over 4 million specimens in the Italian Central Herbarium in addition to this in the phanerogamic collections (seeded plants, which differ from the organisms without flowers and seeds collected in the cryptogamic collections).
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