65,012
Specimens
93%
Georeferenced
1760–2024
Collection years
Where the herbarium's 60,309 georeferenced specimens were collected: each dot is an area, and its colour how many specimens come from it.
ExploreHow many specimens were collected year by year, from 1760 to 2024.
Explore the chartsErbario Centrale Italiano holds 11 subcollections: explore each on its own, or all of them together.
An anonymous cryptogamic herbarium of loose sheets between two hardpapers, including bryophytes, algae, lichens and fungi, evidently assembled with didactic purposes. Numbered specimens, more than one arranged on the same sheets, are devoided of gathering data. No other information is provided but the scientific, typewritten names, even if pencil handwritten words are found on top of some sheets and the different sections are shortly described in German (e.g., "Thallophyten"). The typewritten world "Cryptogamae" is the only one on the cover.
145 specimens
Vittoria Altoviti Avila (1837-1896), the only daughter of Marquis Francesco Altoviti d’Avila and Giuseppina Buonamici, got married in 1854 of Giuseppe Toscanelli (1828-1891), a wealthy entrepreneur of Swiss origin. From 1875 onwards, she spent a lot of time with the son, Giovanni Battista, at Villa Ottone on Elba island (Tuscany, Italy), devoting herself to the collection and study of algae, a field in which she also gained recognition from botanists in academic circles. She learnt the techniques of specimen preparation from Count Francesco Castracane degli Antelminelli (1817-1899) and corresponded with one of the most renowned phycologist of the time, Francesco Ardissone (1837-1910), with whom he established a friendship in 1880, as well as a fruitful intellectual exchange. She mainly undertook excursions on the island, often in the company of his son and the Florentine physician and photographer Giorgio Roster (1843-1927), but she also had the opportunity to collect specimens whilst taking part in cruises aboard the schooner ‘Olga’ and the cutter ‘Corinna’ in the waters of Central Mediterranean; the latter, also in the presence of the Italian zoologist and anthropologist Enrico Hillyer Giglioli (1845-1909). Apart a number of duplicates sent to Ardissone, nowadays preserved within the Israele Achille Italo Forti's Algarium in Padua (PAD), her main scientific legacy is the present collection, including specimens mounted on sheets of different size.
645 specimens
1844 to 1889
The Sardinian Herbarium brings together the supplementary materials used by Pier Virgilio Arrigoni (1932–2026) while compiling his monumental "Flora dell'Isola di Sardegna" (Flora of the Island of Sardinia), published between 2006 and 2015 by Carlo Delfino Editore. Arrigoni, a distinguished Italian botanist and academic, is regarded as one of the foremost experts on Mediterranean flora and vegetation, particularly that of Tuscany and Sardinia. He devoted much of his life to the latter, ever since the period when he worked on the island as an Inspector with the National Forest Service (1957–1967). His 'Flora' represents the definitive synthesis of this decade-long endeavour, following numerous publications devoted to the systematics of specific groups. The contents of the work were substantially based on the analytical and critical study of herbarium specimens, primarily from the important collections held in Florence (FI) to which Arrigoni himself contributed with his most important gatherings. A not inconsiderable proportion of historical collections was also temporarily transferred to his Sardinian herbarium for comparison, pending their return to their original position (thus accounting for the earliest temporal coverage). Nevertheless, the majority of its contents consists of specimens collected by Arrigoni himself, or by his colleagues and collaborators, between 1957 and the 2000s. Although the herbarium is intended, in principle, to be incorporated into the general Florentine herbarium (FI-GEN), it is currently managed as an independent unit, organised according to the numbering of genera devised by Arrigoni himself for his 'Flora'.
18,337 specimens
1852 to 2008
The "Musci Mediolanenses" (1833-1838) are a historical series of bryological exsiccata distributed by Giuseppe Gabriel Balsamo-Crivelli and Giuseppe De Notaris between 1833 and 1838, widely distributed among Italian and European herbaria.
80 specimens
Collection of Italian galls. Since the end of the 19th century, there have been collections of galls or cecidi, i.e. protuberances produced on plants by mite and insect bites or by the attack of fungi and bacteria. The FI gall collection is divided into two parts: a general one, open to the admission of new specimens, currently consisting of material mostly from Tuscany and to be referred to the general herbarium (FI-GEN); the other (this) is the Alessandro Trotter's (1874–1967) and Giacomo Cecconi's (1833–1910) 'Cecidotheca Italica', a serial collection of 575 gall samples. It was mainly compiled by Trotter between 1900 and 1918 and was distributed in 23 fascicles, each containing 25 'items'. The latter, put in envelopes mounted on 24 x 33 cm sheets, are indeed a dual specimen, and the printed labels indicate both the name of the plant and that of the gall-forming agent.
1,154 specimens
1891 to 1916
Rodolfo Chiosi’s (1906–1993) personal herbarium is the result of more than 50 years of research and study, beginning in the 1930s, and serves as an important complementary resource to his numerous publications. Chiosi was an Italian soldier, anti-fascist and partisan, and commander of the ‘Mameli’ Partisan Brigade, which was active on the slopes of Pratomagno, in the Valdarno, during the Second World War. Although not a professional botanist, he became a great expert of plants and collaborated with various academic botanists; he is credited above all with an extensive floristic survey of the Valdarno area around Arezzo, particularly the territories of Montevarchi, San Giovanni and Cavriglia. The herbarium is still managed as a separate close collection, despite planned to be finally incorporated in the general collection (FI-GEN), where many other Chiosi's specimens are already embedded.
9,381 specimens
1884 to 1990
The "Erbario crittogamico italiano" is a set of exsiccata edited and distributed by the Società Crittogamologica Italiana (Italian Cryptogamologic Society) between 1858 and 1885. It overall consisted of two series (1858-1867 and 1868-1885) and 30 fascicles, each consisting of 50 numbered samples of either fungi, algae, lichens, bryophytes or vascular cryptogams (ferns and allied); since the occurrence of mixed specimens in some samples, the effective number of specimens exceed 1500 per series, reaching 1634 in the first one and 1566 in the second one. A detailed description of the collection is provided by Cuccuini (1997. L’Erbario Crittogamico Italiano. Storia e struttura di una collezione. Museo botanico dell’Università: Firenze). At least two copies per specimen of both series are incorporated in FI-GEN, while FI-ECI only refers to some additional fascicles (a complete set of the first 13 fascicles of the second series and an additional, even if uncomplete, duplicate set of fascicles 1-7) kept separately and conserving the original editorial arrangement.
977 specimens
1856 to 1886
The “Fungi exsiccati Fennici” is a historic series of exsiccata, begun with collections from 1923 by the Finnish botanist Lauri Eerikki Kari (1901–1962) for the Botanical Institute of the University of Turku, and continued after his death by Yrjö Lauri Antero Mäkinen (1931–2019), right up until 1985. The collection was distributed in 20 fascicles published from 1957 onwards, each comprising 50 specimens of Finnish fungi in envelopes with printed labels.
1,009 specimens
1923 to 1985
A herbarium dedicated to the flora of Sibillini Range between Umbria and Marche regions in Central Italy. Purchased by the University of Florence in 1963 but physically transferred in FI only in 2018. A complete duplicate (indeed, the main series) of the same collection is kept in CAME.
10,068 specimens
1854 to 1985
The Rodolfo Emilio Giuseppe Pichi Sermolli's (1912-2005) herbarium, acquired in 2007 consists exclusively of ferns and related plants: it is one of the world’s richest collections of its kind, assembled and curated by a man who was one of the world’s leading experts on pteridophytes. The more than 19,000 specimens contained within it, including the original type specimens of no fewer than 190 taxa, come from over 100 different countries across every continent and derive from both personal collections and exchanges with foreign scholars.
19,514 specimens
1760 to 1999
The collection includes herbarium specimens from the region of Tuscany (Italy), especially the southern parts (Maremma), representing over 1500 species. The specimens were collected mostly by the former owner (Federico Selvi, professor of Botany at the University of Firenze) between 1994 and 2020. Every year new specimens were added to the collection. The collection was moved from SELVI (3e09d554-a2a8-41e1-b38f-46b9b623841d) to FI on 25th August 2020, aimed to be merged within the general collection.
3,702 specimens
1895 to 2024
