Museo Nacional de Historia Natural
Casilla 787, Santiago,
Chile
Mélica Muñoz (Curator)
Email: mmunoz@mnhn.c
Claudio Gómez (Director of the National Museum of Natural History)
Email: egomez@mnhn.cl
The National Museum of Natural History, Chile was created in 1830. Since1876 it is housed in the actual building at the Quinta Normal Park. The SGO Herbarium of the Museum, was created in 1889 and is one of the oldest in Latin America, as it holds plants since 1828. It has played a key role for basic knowledge in the flora of Chile and other Latin American countries. Also it holds an important Library, with many original works from the XIX century; both are visited by several researchers interested in the Chilean flora and its relations within the world. Some of them are collaborating with the new Flora of Chile, edited by the Concepción University, Chile, with the Red Books of the Chilean Flora (Antofagasta, Atacama, Coquimbo and O´Higgins regions) and with the Checklist of Vascular Plants of the Southern Cone.
The SGO Herbarium is the second in Chile in number of specimens, with 160.000 specimens, (the Herbarium CONC, has 175.000) but the SGO collections holds the 95% of the Type specimens of the Chilean vascular flora and a little quantity of Argentina, Perú, Bolivia and Brazil.
The Flora of Chile includes approximately 4.330 species of vascular plants. The Type collection has specimens of the collectors of the XIXth century, such as the ancient ones of the Italian naturalist, Carlo J. Bertero, with 404 specimens that includes 137 isotypes, collected between 1828 and 1829.
The creator of the Museum and author of the first Flora of Chile, Claudio Gay, has left at SGO some isotypes (308), as many of his new species were described and deposited by his collaborators at Paris Museum (P).
The proliferous German naturalist R.A. Philippi and his son Federico, have described 3.700 species for Chile and a little number for Argentina (Mendoza, Patagonia), Perú and Bolivia in the border with Chile; around the 98% are deposited at SGO, many of them with isotypes and syntypes.
The second Flora of Chile was done by the German botanist Karl Reiche and also his specimens are deposited at SGO, and includes 127 types of vascular plants.
With the results of the digitizing done for LAPI we are aware that there are also Isotypes from Steudel, Colla, Trinius, DeCandolle, Lessing, Dunal, Lechler, Kraenzlin, Grisebach, Schauer, Meigen, Leybold, Christensen and Skottsberg, among others.
From the XX century there are represented several specimens described by the botanists that has studied the Chilean flora, such as Espinosa, Acevedo, Johow, Fuentes, Navas, Kausel, Lourteig, Muñoz C., Sparre, Zoellner, Grau, Hellwig, Muñoz M., Ehrhart, Danton, Keim & Schaub, Mächler & Walter, Klingenberg, among others.
Finally, there are ancient collections of foreign plants (ca. 230 specimens), that came us exchange from the Berlin Herbarium, such as the ones of F. Sellow (a Humboldt collaborator), Riedel, Krug & Urban, of whom SGO’s has some Brazilian, Columbian, Guyanian, Cuban and Uruguayan isotypes principally of the Myrtaceae family.