DiSSCo-ITINERIS Collection

Collezione carpologica del Museo di Storia naturale di Firenze | Carpological collections of the Natural History Museum of Florence

Collection code
FI-CAR
Alternative Codes
FI999946
Herbarium barcode
Collection Type
n/a
Preservation Type
Sample Dried, Sample Fluid Preserved, Storage Indoors
Specimen count
16,972
Specimens in GBIF
n/a
Description
Main ancillary collection (‘Carpoteca’) The term ‘carpoteca’, which in the strict sense would only indicate a fruit collection, is generically used to indicate a collection of plant specimens of various kinds (fruit, seeds, inflorescences, stem portions and tissues, artefacts, extracts etc.) which, due to their size, shape, composition or structure are preserved in jars or boxes, either dry or ‘in the wet’ (typically alcoholic solution) rather than fixed on herbarium sheets. With its approximately 17,000 specimens, this Carpoteca is the largest in Italy and one of the most important in the world both scientifically and historically. Small in number ,but significant, are the specimens that are not strictly botanical (viruses, prokaryotes, nematodes, insects etc.). Their placement in the collection is however justified by the fact that, with very few exceptions, they are organisms that are either 1) historically linked to the study of Botany, or 2) linked to the plant world by symbiotic relationships (parasites, mutualistic symbionts etc.). Particularly valuable and worthy of special mention are, finally, the specimens belonging to the so-called ‘Old Museum Collection’, a miscellany of organs and plant products set up for educational and popular purposes even before the foundation of the Central Italian Herbarium and inherited as such, mostly still in their original containers, from the Medici and Lorraine collections. Thanks to a comprehensive paper catalogue commissioned in the 1990s and 2000s with the contribution of various students and trainees, it was possible to achieve an almost complete digital cataloguing of the ancillary collections, now (2024) nearing completion. The same tool made it possible to accurately quantify, at the date of the census for the museum dashboard (October 2021), the quantity and quality of the exhibits, as 12,857 dry specimens (4 prokaryotes, 76 insects/flora, 475 fungi, 120 lichens, 89 algae, 39 bryophytes, 62 pteridophytes, 1. 100 gymnosperms and 10,892 angiosperms) and 4,115 ‘wet’ specimens (1 virus, 16 prokaryotes, 2 poriferous, 2 nematodes, 76 insects/galls, 2 bird's nests, 946 fungi, 10 lichens, 43 algae, 10 bryophytes, 10 pteridophytes, 109 gymnosperms and 2,888 angiosperms).
Geographic Coverage
n/a
Taxonomic Coverage
n/a
Temporal Coverage
1551/
Purposes
This is a sub-collection of https://registry.gbif.org/collection/19961847-31f6-4abb-9b92-18a391ba9b0d. Information originally retrieved from internal University of Florence Museal System (UNIFI-SMA) digitization dashboard, compiled in October 2021.
Institution Name
Sede di Via Giorgio La Pira del Museo di Storia naturale di Firenze | Via Giorgio La Pira headquarter of the Natural History Museum in Florence
Institution Code
Home Page
n/a
Catalog URL
n/a
API URLs
n/a
Contacts
n/a
Location
Address: Via Giorgio La Pira, 4
City: Firenze
Province: [TOSCANA] Firenze (FI)
Postal Code: IT-50121
Country: IT
Accession Status
n/a
Personal Collection
No
Active Collection
Yes
Created
2025-06-19 (22:23:43)
Modified
2025-06-19 (22:23:43)
Datasets included

IR0000032 – ITINERIS, Italian Integrated Environmental Research Infrastructures System (D.D. n. 130/2022 - CUP B53C22002150006) Funded by EU - Next Generation EU PNRR- Mission 4 “Education and Research” - Component 2: “From research to business” - Investment 3.1: “Fund for the realisation of an integrated system of research and innovation infrastructures”
  National Research Council of Italy. All Rights Reserved.

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