Herbarium of the University of Turin

Herbaria are unique museums: they keep records of the worldwide flora through dried plant specimens.

They are archives where finds bear witness to studies, investigations and explorations that have made a contribution to shape our knowledge of the plant world over time.

The Herbarium of the University of Turin, with nearly one million specimens, provides evidences of:

• the early stages of botanical studies in Piedmont;
• the cultures of the University Botanic Garden;
• the collections carried out over the course of the earliest botanical expeditions outside Europe;
• the early stages of the Piedmont flora inventory up to the latest in-depth analysis and studies.

Visiting the Herbarium leads along the following thematic pathways:

• history of herbaria. From late 17th century collections of medicinal plant agglutinates to more recent ones recording the spread of invasive alien species;
• floristic studies that led to the inventory of the flora of the Sardinian-Piedmontese Kingdom from the second half of the 18th to the 19th century;
• exploration voyages by Italian botanists who discovered the flora of Latin America in the 19th century and East Africa in the first decades of the 20th century.

The Herbarium is a part of the Dbios, the Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology of the University of Turin. It is located in a 19th-century building adjoining the Botanic Garden.

Duration of the visit: approximately one hour.

The Herbarium is arranged according to the late 19th century approach.

Exsiccata are organised in two sections: Phanerogams and Cryptogams.

The Phanerogamic Herbarium consists of two large open collections still being enriched:

• Herbarium Pedemontanum (TO–HP), featuring finds from Piedmont and the Aosta Valley;
• Herbarium Generale (TO–HG), with material from the rest of Italy and the world.

Cryptogamic collections are classified by systematic groups:

• algae;
• fungi;
• mosses;
• lichens.

The open collections are supplemented by some closed ones of historical and scientific relevance, such as the herbaria by:

• John Hill (1716–1775);
• Lorenzo Terraneo (1677–1714);
• Carlo Francesco Allioni (1728–1804);
• Ludovico Bellardi (1741–1826);
• Giovanni Giacinto Moris (1796–1869).

The Herbarium also holds the following unique collections:

• the carpoteque: fruits,
• the spermatotheca: seeds;
• the xylotheque: woods;
• the lichen-petrographic collection.

The library, which serves as a reference for the Herbarium, is located in the DBios Department.

It holds quite a number of documents related to the exsiccata collections stored in the Herbarium, including books, manuscripts and a variety of archival documents.

Access to documents is allowed on site during opening hours.

The Museum provides:

• the chance to examine the dried specimens;
• guided tours for groups, limited to a maximum of 12 participants per group.
  When school visits take place, students are divided into groups;
• guided tours during the Week of Scientific and Technological Culture and the Fascination of Plants Day;
• events.