From Plant Press, Vol. 22, No. 4, October 2019.
On a recent trip Julia Beros, Botany contactor, accompanied by her sister, visited the Budapest Herbarium. Inspired by the similarities and differences between the herbarium in Budapest Herbarium and the U.S. National Herbarium she recounts some of the tour’s highlights.
Curator Zoltan Barina and Julia Beros in the Bupadest herbarium. (photo by Kathryn Beros)
On the corner block of Könyves Kálmán körút is a massive white stucco castle. A relic of Art Nouveau, the “Fairy Palace” at one time housed one of the Royal secondary schools of Hungary, and after a series of various uses it now safeguards the botanical department of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. Zoltán Barina, one of four permanent collections staff in Budapest, gave us a tour of the collections.
The sun radiates in the stillness of the valley, wafting through shallow fields of grass, reflecting off the architectural vestiges of the past, the Baroque facades, the Maria-Theresa yellows, deflecting back over the hills of Buda. A city divided by its own river, here in Pest the herbarium too is split, into the Carpathian and General collections. The Natural History Museum was created in 1802 and the department of Botany in 1870 (around the time the U.S. National Herbarium was formed, 1848). The collections, now surpassing 2 million (with some housed at an offsite extension location), began with a vast deposit from renowned botanist Pál Kitaibel. Frequently referred to as the “Linnaeus of Hungary” for having been the first official collector in the Carpathian basin, and having more than 1,000 names described from his collections.
The herbarium is growing rapidly, having received roughly 150,000 new specimens within the past 15 years from nearby institutions. Though the building underwent renovations in the 1920s it lacks an industrial freezer, making the challenges of running an herbarium more pronounced. Often relying on various chemicals for fumigation, they are still looking for the best way to manage pests in a less than ideal situation. As Barina notes, there are burns from fluoridic acid (no longer in use) on many older sheets. Likewise at the U.S. National Herbarium many older specimens cured with mercury show dark stains, and controlling the spread is a continual chore. One recent acquisition is a collection of around 40,000 specimens from Szeged University of never before fumigated miscellanea. Although some sheets show visible damage many are untouched, which gave researchers a unique opportunity to study natural pest resistance in certain species (or learn which are the tastiest treat for an herbarium stowaway).
Left: Two quasi-books, known as Holz Bücher, camouflaged by their binding made of tree material, act as plant records for various tree collections. Ranging in age some are 130 years old. (photo by Julia Beros); Right: Interior of a Holz Bücher showing different tree parts, and equipped with secret compartments with written descriptions of the plant habits on tiny scrolls. (photo by Julia Beros)
