Herbario Museo de La Plata
La Plata, Buenos Aires
Argentina
Web: http://www.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/
Laura Iharlegui, Curator
Email: iharlegu@fcnym.unlp.edu.ar
The herbarium of the División Plantas Vasculares of Museo de La Plata, Herbarium LP, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, holds about 500,000 specimens of vascular plants. Although more than two hundred families are represented, the Herbarium LP is well known and recognized by its South American collection of mainly Asteraceae, as well as Poaceae, Fabaceae, and Pteridophytes.
The Herbarium LP was founded in 1887 by F. P. Moreno. The first chairman of the herbarium was C. L. Spegazzini, whose extensive expeditions mainly to Patagonia during the late nineteen century were the origin of the collection of our herbarium. Specimens collected by other very important botanists during the same period of time and the early twenty century as N. Alboff, C. Berg., O. Kuntze, C. Ameghino, and N. Illin contributed to the historical collection of our herbarium. Such historical nature of the collection at LP provides justification for undertaking this work over and above the well-established benefits of providing on-line access to such resources.
More recently, the collections and specimen exchanges carried out in our herbarium by R. Parodi, A. L. Cabrera, L. and H. A. Fabris made LP a worldwide recognized institution. Indeed, A. L. Cabrera's argentine expeditions were the basis of the first national flora projects, and raised the number of the specimens of our herbarium to ca. 400,000.
The Herbarium LP houses about 4,000 types, holotypes, syntypes, and isotypes, mainly from South America. Seven hundred of these types belong to species described by Spegazzini, whereas about 600 belong to Cabrera’s, mostly of them holotypes. Different botanist contributed also to our type collection of Poaceae that reaches 357 specimens. In addition, our institution holds many types of South American species described by different authors from around the world.
Materials of Special Interest:
- Important Families: Asteraceae, Poaceae, Fabaceae
- Important collections: N. Alboff, C. Ameghino, F. G. C. Berg, A. L. Cabrera, H. Fabris, C. E. O. Kuntze, R. A. Philippi, C. L. Spegazzini.