The former Natural Park of the Turin Hills (now named Piedmont Po Protected Areas) consists of two areas (Special Natural Reserve of Bosco del Vaj and Superga Hill Natural Park): 875 hectares as a part of the network of the Turin Po Protected Areas.
In April 2021, the Park Authority donated two collections to the MRSN:

1. The Turin Hills’ collection
Botanists and park rangers have been engaged in plant collecting in the hills surronding Turin from the 1990s until 2010.
Roberto Pascal, former employee of the Park, came up with the idea of creating a herbarium by implementing a project of cross-border collaboration (Alcotra Interreg IIIA Programme), aimed at studying Flora and habitats in the south-western Alps. A vegetation types map of the protected area and floristic cartographies as outputs.

2. The Ostellino herbarium of the Garzaia di Valenza Nature Reserve
Curated by Ippolito Ostellino, the collection encompasses specimens from the Garzaia di Valenza Nature Reserve (Piedmont).

Reorganising, cataloguing and preserving both the collections
During the summer and autumn 2021, the staff of the MRSN Botanical Section, supported by trainees from the School of Natural Sciences of the University of Turin, fulfilled the task of re-organising and cataloguing the herbarium specimens (exsiccata) from both the collections, making them accessible for consultation.

Flora of Piedmont and...
The collection, acquired by the MRSN in 1989, was implemented by Abbà himself by donating another 10,350 specimens from Piedmont, Valle d'Aosta and Liguria.

...exotic plants
The collection is enriched by species originating from other continents that were being naturalised in Piedmont.

Abbà Collections: a "virtual" unification
As Abbà's collections are housed in different institutions, it was necessary to bring them together in a Catalogue including:

• the Herbarium of the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology of the University of Turin (4,000 specimens);

• 9,800 specimens from the Civic Museum of Archaeology and Natural Sciences F. Eusebio of Alba;

• 330 specimens from the Craveri Civic Museum of Natural History of Bra.

Donation of the Sella family to the MRSN in 2005: 2,539 specimens collected in Italy, France, and Croatia.

A passion for herbaria
Alfonso and Ada Sella, as botany enthusiasts, collected, dried, and prepared herbarium specimens that inspired educational books and artistic compositions.
The output of their efforts is the impressive "scientific herbarium" of European spontaneous flora, collected from 1954 to 1984.

The donation
After Alfonso Sella’s passing (2001), the family donated the herbarium to the MRSN, to be preserved, made accessible for consultation and used to foster botanical culture, especially of the younger generations.
The herbarium encompasses 2,539 herbarium specimen vouchers: 1 Algae; 2 Briophyta; 67 Pteridophyta; 9 Gymnospermae; 2,460 Angiospermae.

Grace and flimsiness
The ivory-coloured herbarium specimen vouchers are embellished with a thin frame and a pre-printed sepia card, filled in with neat handwriting. The specimens are secured with transparent adhesive tapes and protected by tissue papers.

Benedetto Lanza, Florentine doctor and naturalist, devoted his life to zoology. He mainly studied reptiles and bats.
He also created a herbarium with specimens gathered during collecting expeditions, both in Italy and abroad, or obtained through exchange programmes.
The most significant part of the herbarium, acquired by the MRSN, is accessible to researchers.

What is the herbarium made up of?

• 10,446 specimens: 51 thallophytes, 543 pteridophytes, 9,852 spermatophytes.

The specimens, collected between 1980 and 2009, represent more than 3,500 different entities.

• herbarium specimen vouchers of the late 19th century, outcome of exchanges with the Gothenburg Museum of Natural History.

What are the "cornerstones"?
Pteridophytes and specimens from Tuscany, Sardinia, and Corsica above all.

Do the specimens also come from abroad?
Quite a number of specimens are from Sweden, Spain, and France, but also from collecting expeditions in Australia, India, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia.

13,000 specimens from all over the world (constantly improving).

Exsiccata Exchanges – Flora from five continents
To further improve the Herbarium's collections, exchanges with international scientific institutions have been undertaken since 1986.
The collection also includes 3,559 specimens from the Rea Herbarium, purchased in 1987.

Exotic specimens
Exotic specimens are being used as the reference for comparison, as defining, identifying and distinguishing species is not a straightforward task. Some of them, although originating from other continents, are distributed throughout Italy (with the exception of Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta) since they grow in parks, botanical gardens, etc.
The collection encompasses two holotypes (reference specimens for the description of a new taxon) of Crassulaceae, collected by the succulents specialist Lorenzo Gallo, who discovered two unknown entities in southern France in 2022.

From the Pampas
As a result of collaboration between the MRSN and some South American universities, more than a thousand specimens were acquired in the late 1980s from the Argentine districts of La Rioja, Mendoza and the Pampean region. The collection includes a significant number of xerophilous species (which are adaptive to increasing wind speeds), and thorny shrubs.

Due to the drive of Father Giuseppe Bono, a part of the Consolata Missions Institute herbarium has housed in the MRSN since 2009.
It has been divided as follows:

• material from Venezuela and Africa, donated and entrusted to the Tropical Herbarium of Florence;
• other non-European collections, plus some from Europe and Italy, donated and entrusted to the MRSN.

The collection also encompasses a batch of specimens collected by Father Bono in the Maritime Alps (Piedmont and Liguria), Valsesia and Sardinia in the second half of the 1900s.
The total 8,000 specimens are currently being studied and classified.

The Bryophyte herbarium encompasses 4,651 specimens, acquired both by international exchanges programmes (mainly with Canada) and collection campaigns in Piedmont.
The herbarium of the Rea Botanical Garden, which includes the collection from the 1970s carried out in Val Sangone and on the moraine hill of Rivoli-Avigliana (Susa Valley), was purchased by the MRSN in 1987.
The botanists René Schumacker and Zedněk Soldán dealt with a demanding set of identification, arrangement, and cataloging in order to recover and improve the collection.

Collections on the field – Sangone Valley herbarium
Persistence of rare species in Piedmont: a high plant diversity index.
In 2002 and 2003, in partnership with the biologist Luca Miserere, the MRSN ascertained the presence (or absence) of species listed on the Italian and European Red Lists of threatened species. As a number of them were found and new ones identified, the richness of the plant diversity of the entire area was reasserted.
The collection was increased by adding 556 specimens.

Under the microscope
A "microscopic" iconographic kit: hundreds of details of liverworts, mosses, and sphagnum moss.
Most of the specimens from collections “in the field” were photographed under a stereo microscope before being dried.
An archive of almost 900 detailed images of leaves and reproductive organs was thus obtained. Some of the photos were included in the iconographic set of the Catalogue of the Bryophytes of Val Sangone, published by the Museum in 2005.

A plant family with worldwide distribution

The Campanulaceae
Over 1,700 specimens; more than twenty years of scientific research.
The collection of specimens belonging to this family started in the early 1990s. The MRSN project "Campanulaceae: biosystematic, taxonomic, and chorological studies", aimed at identifying endangered species of the Italian flora.
73 entities of European origin are registered in the collection.
Other collections of the MRSN Herbarium include specimens of this family.

44 species in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta; over 1,200 specimens from the western Italian Alps
The collecting expeditions were aimed at analysing the distribution of Campanulaceae in Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta; 44 specimens belonging to 6 genera (Campanula, Phyteuma, Adenophora, Jasione, Legousia and Trachelium) are documented in the MRSN’s collections.
The collection encompasses 1,200 samples (around 300 from Valle d'Aosta).

Plant diversity: analysing pollen and seeds
Herbarium samples were used to analyse pollen; seeds were collected from fruiting specimens, then partially stored in the spermatheca.
The support of the Regional Parks’ staff has been crucial in collecting the specimens.

Fruits and Seeds collection
Number: 3,500 specimens
Size: from tenths of millimeter to tens of centimetres

What is the collection purpose?

• identify critical species and complete learning material (floristic and systematic surveys);
• comply with the requests of ornithologists, entomologists, paleobotanists, and archaeologists;
• forensic investigations.

What is it made up of?

• 1,361 specimens from the Rea herbarium;
• about thousand specimens from live seeds exchanges with the Rea Botanic Garden.

Where do they come from?

• from plants grown in botanic gardens around the world;
• from the Western Alps (specimens collected in the wild).

The diversity of Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta flora is documented by more than 300 specimens of fruits and seeds of different families, exotic species included.
Due to the increase in the number of Campanulaceae specimens, MRSN staff and partners have implemented the collection of seeds (over 400) of species of this family.

Fossil seeds
The spermatotheque holds 58 fossil fruit and seed specimens found in Piedmont, mainly from clay outcrops rich in plant remains, along the Stura di Lanzo stream. They are evidence of Pliocene forest flora (3 million years ago), with species that are today extinct or present outside Europe only (for instance, conifers of the genus Glyptostrobus).

Over 5,200 specimens from all over the world

From the Western Alps to Argentina
The MRSN's collection of lichenised fungi consists of 5,246 specimens collected by the Museum's staff and its partners, or donated and exchanged with European and non-European institutions.

Piedmont and Valle d'Aosta
The purchase of the Rea Botanic Garden herbarium (1987) brought 202 samples (138 from Val Sangone, Piedmont) to the MRSN.
Further 400 specimens are from Piedmont and just under 200 from Valle d’Aosta.

Greenland, Canada, Iceland, and Svalbard archipelago
The collection from the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere includes 100 specimens from Greenland, as many from Canada, 30 from the Svalbard archipelago, and 20 from northern Iceland.
The support of professional lichenologists was crucial for the successful identification of a large number of specimens.

Lichens from different continents: an open exhibition
Specimens were displayed in several temporary exhibitions, such as 'Lichens' (1995), in which plant-like organisms were brought to the attention of visitors from a biological, physiological and ecological perspective, as well as for their use in pharmacopoeia. To enrich the collection, a campaign was undertaken by Enzo Aimo of the Italian Lichenological Society in Argentina in 1994: 210 specimens, mainly from the Rio Negro province (north-western Patagonia, at the foot of the Andes), were incorporated into the MRSN Herbarium since then.

Valsesia
In 2012, Gianfranco Rotti, a research associate of the Calderini Museum in Varallo Sesia, donated his collection of rupicolous lichens (3,600 classified and labelled specimens) to the MRSN. The collection provides evidence of the richness of the lichen flora in Valsesia.

7,800 specimens
The collection, which started with the establishment of the Botany Section (1983), records the floristic researches carried out by both MRSN staff and research partners over the years. Collecting expeditions to under-explored areas (Canavese, Lanzo Valleys, Soana Valley, Waldensian Valleys) contributed to the in-depth analysis of systematic groups and exotic specimens.

The Stura di Demonte Valley (CN)
The outcome of decades of collecting expeditions in the Sura Valley is an outstanding collection of 2,300 specimens.
Field research and previous studies forming the botanical literature of the area will be published soon in the Catalogue of Species held at the MRSN and other institutions.

Brothers of the Holy Family of Belley

The herbarium was created in 1899, on the Chartreuse Mountains, by a member of the Brothers of the Holy Family of Belley, whose aim, as a teacher, was to help students discover the plants of the region and improve their capability to properly identify, collect and use spontaneous plants.

Prize giving ceremony at the Universal Exhibition in Paris (1900)
The 5 volumes of the herbarium were presented at the Universal Exhibition of Paris, in 1900.
The collective school work was rewarded for the quality and richness of topics treated.
In the early 20th century, the Brothers of the Holy Family brought it to Piedmont for safekeeping in the archives of Villa Brea, in Chieri.
In 1992, it was donated to the MRSN to be preserved and made it accessible to the public and researchers.

634 specimens of dried plants
The herbarium encompasses 634 dried plants and 21 photographic prints of the Chartreuse Mountains.
Any voucher has a specimen mounted on, which is identified by: botanical name, spatio-temporal coordinates of the finding, notes about its use in the pharmacopoeia of the time.