Research Article |
Corresponding author: Francesco Roma-Marzio ( romamarzio.francesco@gmail.com ) Academic editor: Gianniantonio Domina
© 2017 Francesco Roma-Marzio, Lorenzo Peruzzi, Gianni Bedini.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Roma-Marzio F, Peruzzi L, Bedini G (2017) Personal private herbaria: a valuable but neglected source of floristic data. The case of Italian collections today. Italian Botanist 3: 7-15. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.3.12097
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Today private collections still represent an important source of information as is evident from the available literature, where, in many cases, private collections are mentioned both in floristic and taxonomic/systematic researches. We present a summary of the main information about private herbaria in Italy, whose collections are currently increasing. Based on our survey, we retrieved information on 34 personal herbaria where 156,361 specimens are preserved at present. Piedmont and Tuscany resulted the two Italian regions with the highest number of collections, whereas for 9 regions we obtained no answer. The most represented families resulted Asteraceae and Poaceae, whereas the most represented genera resulted Carex, Trifolium, and Hieracium. Taken all together, these collections rank 16th among the 68 institutional public herbaria officially recognised in Italy.
Herbarium specimens, Italian botanist, plant collection, floristic data
Private herbarium collections have represented the starting point for the establishment of many of the still-extant natural history museums around the world. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the fashion for collecting plants resulted in the amassing of large private collections, which later became the basis of institutional collections (
Private collections are preserved also in other Italian public institutions like civic museums or schools. To name but a few examples, the herbarium of Giovanni Montini (1802–1854) is preserved in the Civic Museum of Bassano del Grappa (
Today, private collections still represent an important source of information. This is evident from the available literature where, in many cases, private collections are mentioned both in floristic (e.g.
In this paper, we make a first attempt to summarize the main information about private herbaria currently preserved in Italy.
We defined as private herbarium a collection of dried vascular plants, continuously increased with new gatherings, and independently managed by a private collector, without support from any public or private research institution. We excluded the institutional herbaria listed in the Index Herbariorum (
In order to obtain data from Italian private collections of plants, we prepared an on-line questionnaire based on a Google module. The questionnaire included 17 questions (15 with a free-text answer and 2 with a multiple-choice answer), focused on the herbarium name, its owner, the starting date of collection and the number and the main geographic origin of specimens, the address where the herbarium is preserved, the kind of management (including pest control), and other questions about the dissemination of data in the past, and the availability of the owner to share the data (Table
Question | Type of answer |
---|---|
Name of the herbarium | free |
Owner and email | free |
City where the herbarium is preserved | free |
Number of preserved samples (add * for estimated number) | free |
Are the specimens organized in a database? In case of positive answer, what kind of database? | free |
Are you willing to share your data in a free and online database? | yes/no |
Are photo/scan of the specimens available? | yes/no |
Starting date of the collection | free |
Number of taxa (add * for estimated number) | free |
Most represented family (and %) | free |
Most represented genus (and %) | free |
Main country where the samples were collected (and %) | free |
Main Italian region where the samples were collected (and%) | free |
Type of organization of the collection (e.g. alphabetical order of genera) | free |
Has the herbarium some pests? How it is serious? | free |
Are the samples subjected to a pest control? What kind? | free |
Was the herbarium mentioned in some scientific publications? Could you cite some? | free |
In order to disseminate our initiative we used the mailing list of the working group for floristics, systematics and evolution of the Italian Botanical Society (Gruppo per la Floristica, Sistematica ed Evoluzione). In addition we used the most common social networks (e.g. Facebook) and the Acta Plantarum forum (http://www.actaplantarum.org/), an Italian website focused on national floristic information; in some cases we also sent e-mail messages to personal addresses.
Based on our survey, we checked 34 personal herbaria, where 156,361 specimens are currently preserved. A list of personal herbaria, and relative informations, can be freely accessed at https://goo.gl/eJA0Ga. This online checklist will be continuously updated in case that other collectors will send us information about their collections.
The richest herbarium, with 20,000 estimated samples, resulted the Herbarium Antonietti (Piedmont) followed by Herbarium Soldano (Piedmont, 18,100 samples) and Herbarium Branchetti (Emilia-Romagna, 13,000 samples). On the other hand, the herbarium with the lower number of samples resulted the Herbarium Caetani with 38 specimens (Table
Names and number of specimens preserved in the 34 Italian private herbaria resulted by present study.
Herbarium name as provided by owners | N° of samples |
---|---|
Herb. Antonietti | 20,000 |
Erbario Soldano | 18,100 |
Erbario Branchetti | 13,000 |
Erbario Enzo Bona | 13,000 |
Herb. Hölzl Norbert | 12,300 |
Herb. Ardingo e Franco Picco | 8,000 |
Herbarium A. Ruggero | 5,000 |
Herb. Domina | 5,000 |
Herb. Dellavedova Roberto | 5,000 |
Herbarium Meridianum-Collezione Maiorca-Caprio | 4,740 |
Erbario Merli | 4,000 |
Herb. Calvia | 4,000 |
Herb. Nicola Ardenghi | 4,000 |
Herb. Selvi | 3,600 |
Herb. Croce | 3,500 |
Erbario di Stefano Atzori | 3,500 |
Herb. Cecchi | 3,273 |
Herb. M. Bovio | 3,116 |
Herb. Franco Giordana | 3,027 |
Herbarium Varalda | 3,000 |
Erbario Morelli | 2,500 |
Herbarium Marco La Rosa | 2,085 |
Herbario Gonnelli | 2,000 |
Herbarium Braydense | 1,947 |
HB. G.Pellegrino | 1,397 |
HbGanz | 1,300 |
Herb. Gianguzzi-Palermo | 1,200 |
Herb. Giuseppe Cataldi | 1,123 |
Herb.Tognon | 1,000 |
Herb. Orsenigo | 1,000 |
Erbario Trapanese | 800 |
Herb. Roma-Marzio | 600 |
Erbario Pascale | 315 |
Herbarium Caetani | 38 |
Concerning the geographic location of the herbaria (Figure
The most represented families resulted Asteraceae (in 24 herbaria) and Poaceae (8 herbaria), whereas the most represented genera resulted Carex and Trifolium (in 4 herbaria respectively), followed by Hieracium (in 3 herbaria).
Regarding the availability to share their own data in a free and online database, 24 collectors (71%) have agreed to this proposal whereas, concerning citations of herbaria in a scientific paper, 29 herbaria (85%) were cited at least once.
Almost all herbaria (93%) have an associated database (41% in Excel, 37% in MS-Access, 7% in FileMaker and 7 % in MS Word, 4% in SQL-compliant DBMS and 4% in other systems); for 13 herbaria (38%) digital photos or scans of the specimens are available. As regards the arrangement of the collection, 16 (47%) collectors are adopting an alphabetical order, 10 (29%) follow
Pest problems afflicted 22 herbaria (65%) of which 13 (59%) show negligible, 9 (41%) intermediate, and none serious problems. About the solution adopted by collectors to prevent/control pests, 50% use freezing methods, 29% use chemical products (mainly para-dichlorobenzene and camphor), 6% a combination of freezing and chemical products and 5% do not adopt any pest control.
A cross-examination of these two questions (entity of the pest and adopted solution) revealed that private herbarium without treatment are always hit by medium (60%) to low (40%) pest problems. On the other hand, chemical treatment resulted slightly more efficient than freezing, whereas herbaria treated both with freezing and chemical treatment have no (65%) or only low (< 35%) pest problems (Figure
Based on our investigation, about 156,000 specimens are currently preserved in Italian personal herbaria, making this “virtual” herbarium, taken all together, rank 16th among the 68 institutional public herbaria. A very preliminary bibliographic survey revealed that some private herbaria were recently cited in scientific papers (e.g.
We hope that our survey can represent the starting point to re-evaluate the role and the importance of private plant collections, where a remarkable amount of valuable floristic data is currently preserved.
All the following owners of private Italian herbaria who answered to the on-line survey are gratefully acknowledged: Michele Aleo, Aldo Antonietti, Nicola M.G. Ardenghi, Stefano Atzori, Enzo Bona, Maurizio Bovio, Romans Caetani, Giacomo Calvia, Giuseppe Cataldi, Lorenzo Cecchi, Antonio Croce, Roberto Della Vedova, Gianniantonio Domina, Franco Eugenio Rota, Claudia Ganz, Lorenzo Gianguzzi, Franco Giordana, Vincenzo Gonnelli, Norbert Hölzl, Marco La Rosa, Giovanni Maiorca, Marco Merli, Viliam Morelli, Simone Orsenigo, Marziano Pascale, Giorgio Pellegrino, Franco Picco, Alessandro Ruggero, Federico Selvi, Adriano Soldano, Gianni Tognon, Piero Giuseppe Varalda.