Botany
The Italian Central Herbarium | (Herbarium Centrale Italicum, HCI)
It is the largest Italian herbarium, and among the top 10 in the world in terms of number of samples.
Its foundation is due to the Sicilian doctor and botanist Filippo Parlatore, called to direct it in 1842 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopoldo II of Lorraine. Since then, the Herbarium has grown steadily: It is a so-called “open” herbarium, with continuous acquisitions of plant samples.
It contains the collection of seed plants (Phanerogamic Herbarium) and that of organisms free of flowers and seeds such as moss, ferns, algae, fungi and lichens (Cryptogamic Herbarium). There is also a store that contains hundreds of thousands of samples that have not yet been studied.
The Herbarium is a formidable archive of plant biodiversity. In fact, it also preserves plants harvested in places where today they no longer exist or are in a critical state of conservation. The drainage of a swamp, for example, involves the disappearance of all plants linked to the aquatic environment and, in the absence of herbarium finds collected there, it is very likely that no trace of them remains today. This is one of the reasons that makes the importance of the Central Italian Herbarium vital and, more generally, of the memory preserved in the herbaria around the world.