Herbarium collections (TUR)

The herbarium was founded in 1919 with the acquisition of Edward August Vainio’s lichen collection. Active work started in 1922 when the collections were transferred from Helsinki to Turku and their cataloguing began. Vainio became the first curator.

The main collections currently have over a million specimens: about 610 000 vascular plants, 205 000 fungi, 125 000 mosses, 77 000 lichens, 15 500 macrofossils and 6 500 algae. About a quarter of the specimens belong to the TUR-A collection, which we maintain together with Åbo Akademi. We also maintain some separate collections such as the University of Eastern Finland’s fungi collection (JOE) and Rainar Hakulinen’s lichen collection.

A major part of the collections come from Southwest Finland, Inari Lapland, West Lapland and Amazonia. There are specimens from all over the world, however, with e.g. quite a significant collection from Iran.

Older historical specimens include those collected by the following: A.V. Auer, A.C. Batista, O. Fortelius, A.W. Gadolin, P. Kallio, L.E. Kari, I. Kause, U. Laine, Th. Lange, A. Lindfors, E. Lönnrot, Y. Mäkinen, J. Montell, H. Såltin and A. Vaarama.

Donations and the herbarium’s own collecting events constantly bring more specimens into the collections. The fastest growing collections are currently the Amazonian plant collections, tropical moss collections and Nordic fungi collections.