Universidad del Valle de Guatemala
18 Avenida 11-95, zona 15 VHIII
1015.0
Guatemala
Ana Lucrecia de MacVean, Curator
Email: ['amacvean@uvg.edu.gt', 'amacvean@gmail.com']
The UVAL herbarium was created in 1974 as a teaching laboratory. In 1990 it was established as a reference collection and became the official herbarium of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala maintaining the UVAL acronym as registered in the Index Herbariorum. The main research areas of interest are: tropical taxonomy, ecology, conservation and ethnobotany.
Its collections include 25,000 mounted specimens of which approximately 15,000 are fully identified. These are kept in metal cabinets filed in alphabetical order. The herbarium is divided in Pteridophytes, Bryophytes, Gymnosperms, Angiosperms, Lichens, Marine Algae and Fungi. It also contains regional collections of Sierra de las Minas (cloud forests), Volcanic chain (montane forests), Petén (lowland tropical forests), and Huehuetenango (alpine forests).
In 1995 a data base was started and in 2005 it was restructured to make it available through the internet, including information of identified and georeferenced plant collections of Guatemala (both UVAL and MOBOT records). To date (2009) more than 10,000 specimens have been digitized and are available on the web.
Materials of Special Interest:
UVAL herbarium has a small collection of photographs of Guatemalan flora. Additionally we have a small collection of ethnobotanical interest that includes traditional handicrafts, medicinal plants that are used by local indigenous communities.