Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro
CEP: 22460-030
Jardim Botânico
Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro
Brazil
Dra. Rafaela Campostrini Forzza
Email: rb@jbrj.gov.br
The Herbarium of the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro was created on March 25, 1890 when the naturalist João Barbosa Rodrigues assumed the direction of the Botanical Garden, with the purpose of recovering its original role of a practical school for natural history. The initial archive of this herbarium was composed of 25 000 samples donated by D. Pedro II. Among the collections acquired by the Emperor, those from the herbarium of the French botanist Antoine-Laurent Apollinaire Fee may be highlighted.
Through the 20th century, there have been many transformations within the herbarium, including changes within the Botanical Garden’s administrative structure as well as changes to the country itself. Between 1915 and 1935, under the direction of Antonio Pacheco Leão, the herbarium received a new impetus thanks to the dedicated actions of various botanists, among them Adolpho Ducke, Johan Löfgren, João Geraldo Kuhlmann, Paulo Campos Porto, and Alexander Curt Brade. In 1938 the Botanical Garden herbarium registered in the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) and received its acronym RB (R from Rio de Janeiro and B from the institution’s second name, Jardim Botânico) later publicized in the Index Herbariorum .
In the following decades, the JBRJ researchers organized various expeditions for the collection of plants in different regions of the country. In the same way, the interchange with national and international herbaria increased. All this work and study made possible enrichment of the archive, expanding its scientific importance for the knowledge of Brazilian flora. The most important collection of the herbarium is the Nomenclatural Types estimated at 6000 examples, being considered the largest in Brazil. Recently incorporated to the archive of the RB herbarium is the DNA Bank, which currently numbers around 3000 species of Brazilian flora.
In May 2005, the Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro initiated an ambitious project for computerizing its entire archive. The main objective of this project is to recover and make available in an efficient and agile manner the information contained in the samples that are deposited in RB and make it available to the researchers in attendance or offsite. The digitizing, which began in August of 2005, has reached 350 000 desiccates. This information is available at the site www.jbrj.gov.br/jabot .