About the project
The Herbarium of the Botanical Garden of the University of Bern (Herbarium Bernense) is one of the five largest herbaria in Switzerland. This collection includes plants, algae and fungi either dried or preserved in alcohol. The specimens can last for centuries and represent a unique long-term archive of the occurrence, distribution, and diversity of the respective organisms.
Collections of the Herbarium Bernense
- Herbarium specimens: The largest collection of the Herbarium Bernense are the herbarium specimens, pressed and mounted on herbarium sheets. The oldest of the estimated 500,000 specimens dates back to the year 1753.
- Wet collection: The wet collection, preserved in an 75% ethanol solution, is probably the largest historical wet collection of plants and fungi in Switzerland and comprises 1,142 specimens.
- Dry bulk collection: This collection comprises about 3000 specimens of seeds, woody fruits, tree cross sections and fungi fruit bodies.
- Fossil collection: About 3000 specimens of fossilized plants and archaeological finds (e.g. fossilised grains from prehistoric pile dwellings) are contained in this collection.
- Botanical illustrations: Botanical illustrations have the advantage that they can show natural colours better than preserved specimens, such as the magnificent water colours of fungi by Gustav Otth (1806-1874).
- Photo collection: Besides slides and photographs, the Herbarium Bernense includes several artistically hand-coloured glass plates, including those by Josef Hanel (1865-1940). He enjoyed a high reputation as a master of the photographic craft and as a gifted artist.
Reconditioning and digitization
Since 2022, four projects are currently running to recondition and digitize the first 10% of the Herbarium Bernense collection. These projects were made possible by the Swiss Network of Natural History Collections (SwissCollNet):
- "Efficient digitisation of herbarium specimens through the use of digitisation routes". In collaboration with the Naturama Aargau
- "Historical Swiss alcohol collections of plants and fungi: rare and hidden treasures". In collaboration with the Botanical Museum of the University of Zurich
- "Digitisation of the Fribourg (NHMF) and Bern (BERN) herbaria". In collaboration with the Natural History Museum of Fribourg and the Botanical Garden of the University of Fribourg, Botanical Garden of the University of Fribourg
- "Digitisation of the three-dimensional dry collection and associated herbarium specimens" In collaboration with the Botanical Museum of the University of Zurich, the Herbaria of the University and ETH Zurich and the Naturmuseum Winterthur
Funding
Reconditioning and digitization of the Herbarium Bernense are kindly funded by the following institutions:
Technical implementation
This website is a purely static build with a client-side search component. It is hosted by Github and was developed by Sebastian Flick and Peter Dängeli of the Data Science Lab using Svelte and Svelte-Kit. For more technical information, see our Github repository.
Cover picture by Andrea Bordoli