HERBARIA

HERBARIA

Herbaria, that is, collections of pressed dried plants presented either on loose leaves or bound in books, were among the most frequently created and used botanical guides. They were often also called hortus siccus, that is, ‘dry garden’. Creation of herbaria started in the sixteenth century from Italy in connection with improved accessibility of paper, which allowed for a safe drying of plant specimens. Still, probably the main reason driving their popularity was the growing interest of Renaissance scholars in natural sciences, in particular in describing and classifying new plant species, both those brought from the ‘New World’ and endemic species. Herbaria thus found favour as an excellent tool for preserving and studying individual plant species.

The first herbaria were created in association with universities and botanical gardens, for instance in Pisa and Bologna. The earliest surviving herbarium is most likely an anonymous work from 1544, currently kept in Florence. In our territory, one of the oldest known collections of dried plant specimens is the Broumov herbarium (1595).

The methods of creating and identifying dried plants had over the centuries significantly evolved. For instance, until the introduction of binomial nomenclature by Carl Linnaeus (whose system is used to this day), plants were known under their local names or pre-Linnean Latin names. With the development of botany in late seventeenth and eighteenth century, it became standard practice to include with each exemplar a label with information about the collector, location, and date of collection. Such labels then helped with documentation, study, and preservation of botanical material for research or teaching purposes.

In the Czech Republic, preservation of plants as herbaria specimens has a strong tradition, closely linked to scientific and cultural institutions (the Charles University, National Museum, Moravian Provincial Museum, the Silesian Museum, etc.). These institutions jointly care for about 7 million herbarium items.