Botanical Museum

Divisions

• Phanerogams Division
• Cryptogams Division
• Mycology Division

Projects and information

• Linnaean specimens in the Botanical Museum
• Atlas of Finnish vascular plants (in Finnish)
• Atlas Florae Europaeae

The Botanical Museum contains more than 3.1 million herbarium specimens of plants and fungi (1 720 000 vascular plants, 580 000 bryophytes, 21 000 algae, 380 000 lichenized fungi, 350 000 other fungi; annual increase is ca. 25 000 specimens). The collections make up the national herbarium of Finland. About a half of them have been collected in Finland. However, the collections are worldwide: in addition to Finland and the neighbouring areas well represented are the Mediterranean, East Africa and southern South America, among others. Extensive and important new collections of bryophytes and fungi derive from East and Southeast Asia. The material is mainly from the mid-1800s and more recent, because the collections of the Academy of Turku, forerunner of the Helsinki University, were destroyed in a fire in 1827. However, part of the Academy material survived, and the present collections include c. 15 000 sheets of this old material, e.g. ca. 80 Linnaean specimens. As to the phanerogams, most important is Christian Steven's herbarium, mainly collected in the Caucasus Mts. and Crimea. Among the bryophytes, the herbarium includes V. F. Brotherus' and S. O. Lindberg's collections very important to the bryology of tropical areas and China. The lichen collections of Erik Acharius, the "Father of Lichenology", and William Nylander include significant materials from all over the world. P. A. Karsten’s fungus collections are also basic.