Meise Botanic Garden Herbarium (BR)

Meise Botanic Garden (MeiseBG) has a history that goes back to 1796. Today, it is an internationally recognized botanic garden in a park of 92 hectares, and a centre of excellence for plant biodiversity research. MeiseBG houses the 15th largest herbarium in the world, holding 4 million preserved specimens, a comprehensive botanical library, a seed bank and a living plant collection with 25,000 accessions of plants from around the world. Research focuses on plant, algal and fungal taxonomy, evolution, biodiversity conservation, ecosystems and ethnobotany. The preserved collections (including the herbarium, wood, carpological, slide and molecular collections) have a global scope, with a focus on Central Africa, Belgium, and Southwestern Europe, with additionally important historic collections from Latin America. Highlights are the private collections of famous 19th botanists such as Henri Van Heurck (diatoms), Carl Von Martius (Flora brasiliensis), Heinrich Gustav von Reichenbach (orchids) and Crépin (wild roses), which form the historic core of the collections. A wide range of taxonomic groups are covered including: vascular plants, lichens, mosses, liverworts, fungi, myxomycetes, macroalgae, and diatoms. Meise Botanic Garden is dedicated to digitally unlock these precious and unique botanical collections.