Tag Archives: botany

Sobre colecciones pomológicas y su rastro en el valle del Loira

Por José Pardo-Tomás, Institución Milá y Fontanals-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

En el verano de 2013, fueron rescatados del Castell de La Bleda (Alt Penedès, Barcelona) libros, muebles y objetos varios que habían pertenecido al gabinete de curiosidades que la familia Salvador mantuvo en la rebotica de su farmacia abierta en el centro de Barcelona durante seis generaciones, desde 1626 hasta 1855. Una de las más gratas sorpresas de aquel rescate fue el descubrimiento de que una parte notable del medio millar de modelos de frutas que habían configurado el proyecto Pomona española de José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855) había sobrevivido a la incuria del tiempo (fig. 1). Aquellos materiales de 2013 venían a sumarse al grueso del gabinete Salvador rescatado ya en 1938 por las autoridades republicanas catalanas; con ellos, llegaron también documentos, cartas y manuscritos que permitieron a Xavier Ulled investigar a fondo la personalidad y la obra del último de los Salvador. Próspero empresario agrícola, especialmente preocupado por las innovaciones agronómicas en el campo de la fruticultura y de la silvicultura, José Salvador amplió las colecciones naturalistas heredadas de su antepasados y las reorientó, creando una xiloteca y concibiendo el magno proyecto de la Pomona española. Para llevarlo a cabo encargó esos modelos de frutas, además de negociar en la corte madrileña el patrocinio de la Corona y lanzar una suscripción que financiara la publicación de las láminas y textos destinados a acompañar a los modelos. La Pomona española comenzaría por reproducir ejemplares de todos y cada uno de los frutos que se cultivaban en el reino de España. El proyecto no acababa aquí, sino que José Salvador exhibió esos modelos en su establecimiento desde el que se ofrecía enseñar a los propietarios agrícolas de Cataluña las nuevas técnicas y los avances de la ciencia agronómica en el terreno de la fruticultura.

Fig. 1. Modelos de fruta de la colección Salvador rescatados en 2013 y restaurados por Olga Muñoz con motivo de la exposición Salvadoriana. El gabinete de curiosidades de Barcelona (Museu de Ciències Naturals i Institut Botànic de Barcelona, 2014-2016). Foto: Natalia Hervás.

Entre los testimonios aportados por la tesis de Ulled (2020), varios hablaban del papel inspirador que había tenido para el proyecto de Salvador el contacto establecido con Louis Claude Noisette (1772-1849), jardinero y agrónomo francés. Salvador adquirió un ejemplar de la segunda edición de la obra Le Jardin fruitier histoire et culture des arbres fruitiersen (París, Audot libraire éditeur, 1833-1839) y sus volúmenes se conservan actualmente en la biblioteca Salvador, en el Institut Botànic de Barcelona.

Antoine Noisset (1778-1858), hermano de Louis-Claude, recibió en 1822 el encargo de proyectar el Jardin des Plantes de Nantes, que luego dirigió hasta 1835 (Dubald, 2019: 422). ¿Provienen de él o de sus descendientes los modelos de frutas que aún hoy se encuentran en las dependencias del Jardin des Plantes de esa ciudad? Debemos a la amabilidad de Aurélien Bour, responsable científico del Jardin, el haber podido consultar la lista completa de las piezas. Se trata de más de dos centenares de moulages (la mayor parte representando distintas variedades de peras) que la base de datos del establecimiento data entre 1850 y 1950, aunque bien pudieran ser del principio de ese período impreciso. Entre 1822 y 1870 son varios los establecimientos que se instituyen en la Francia “provincial” dedicados a la enseñanza de la agronomía; la horticultura y la fruticultura formaban parte de los planes de docencia teórica y práctica de las escuelas que se abren en varias ciudades. Parece claro que la adquisición de modelos de frutas –en cera y yeso, primero, en papier mâché, más tarde– fue una práctica habitual de estos centros. Aunque la historiografía ha insistido sobre todo en los grandes fabricantes parisinos, como Auzoux, lo cierto es que –antes y después de Auzoux, que no empezó a fabricar piezas botánicas hasta 1872– hubo también oportunidad para los mouleurs locales, como el nantés Moyon.

A él se deben con toda seguridad la mayor parte de los sesenta moulages de frutas que se conservan hoy en los modernísimos depósitos que el Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle tiene en las afueras de la ciudad y que pudimos manejar y fotografiar con toda libertad, gracias a la amabilidad de Eric Guiho, responsable de las colecciones botánicas del museo (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Modelos de frutas de la colección del Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Nantes. Fotos del autor.

En este caso, es posible conocer con un poco más de precisión la procedencia de las piezas y el contexto en el que se produjeron y se emplearon. Por lo que se deduce de las etiquetas y de la documentación que conserva el museo, estos modelos de frutas son muy posteriores a los de los Salvador e, incluso, a los del jardín botánico de Nantes. Llegaron al museo en 1982 desde la Escuela de Comercio de Nantes, aunque en realidad su fabricación se remonta 1902-1905. Fueron encargados para el efímero Musée Colonial que se formó para la enseñanza práctica de la agricultura en la Sección Colonial de la escuela, por iniciativa del industrial y banquero Hyppolite Durand-Gasselin (1839-1939). La enseñanza teórica proyectada para quienes estudiaran adscritos a esa sección se llevaba a cabo en la sede de la Escuela de Comercio, en el viejo edificio de la ceca de Nantes (Hôtel des Monnaies), mientras que la enseñanza práctica, necesitada de huertas y de cultivos en invernaderos, se ubicaba en el Château du Grand-Blotterau a unos pocos kilómetros de la ciudad, cedido por Durand-Gasselin. Aquí es donde se destinaron los modelos de frutas que se encargaron a Noyon y al fabricante parisino Theveny. Su papel didáctico tuvo una vida breve: en 1909, la sección colonial cerró y los materiales fueron enviados a la sede de la Escuela de Comercio, en la rue Voltaire, pared con pared con el Muséum d’historie naturelle.

Por lo que respecta a la colección pomológica que hoy se conserva en el museo de historia natural de la ciudad de Orleans (hoy conocido como Muséum d’Orléans pour la biodiversité et l’environnement, MOBE), gracias a la mediación de Philippe Guillet, contactamos con Vladimir Jecmenica, responsable de las colecciones botánicas, quien nos facilitó completo acceso a las piezas guardadas en los depósitos, además de proporcionarnos la –por otra parte, escasa– documentación que el museo tiene sobre esa colección. Entre ella, se encuentra un informe, datado en 1985, resultado de la visita que Madame Evelyn Leterme, experta en pomología en el Conservatoire Variétal d’Aquitanie, hizo para examinar los modelos de frutas. Su diagnóstico elogiaba el estado de conservación de 86 de las 124 piezas, así como su calidad en lo que se refiere a la capacidad hiperrealista de reflejar hasta la más pequeña lenticelle, la pubescence des sépales et les taches dues aux maladies (fig. 3). Sin embargo, Leterme dejaba sin respuesta preguntas fundamentales, como qué materiales (además del yeso, que resultaba evidente) estaban implicados en la fabricación de esos modelos tan perfectos. Sobre la procedencia, se limitaba a dejar constancia de que las seis cajas en las que se hallaron provenían del Muséum de La Rochelle y estaban dirigidas, con fecha de 1949, al antiguo conservador del museo de Orleans, Paul Sougy. Será, pues, en La Rochelle en donde habrá que proseguir la indagación. La existencia de una enseñanza reglada de la agronomía en la Charenta Marítima desde mediados del siglo XIX es una pista bastante prometedora.

Fig. 3. Algunos ejemplares de la colección pomológica hoy conservada en el MOBE. (fotos del autor)

Referencias

Samantha Bazan et al. HerbEnLoire. Catalogue des herbiers recensés en Pays de la Loire, Angers, Université d’Angers, Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest – antenne Pays de la Loire, 2018.

Bernard van den Driesseche, Le jardin des plâtres: un autre regard sur les collections de moulages, en: Rune Frederiksen & Eckart Marchand, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2010: 635-650.

Déborah Dubald, Capital nature: a history of French municipal museums of natural history, 1795-1870, Florence: European University Institute PhD theses, 2019.

Noël Guillet, Reine Guillet, Le Grand Blottereau: son château, son écrin de verdure, Nantes, Association Doulon-histoire, 2014.

Marta Pérez, Olga Muñoz, Eulàlia Garcia-Franquesa, Conservación-restauración de modelos botánicos de frutas del Gabinete Salvador, Ge-conservación, 9, 2016: 83-95.

Xavier Ulled Bertran, Pomonas y anatomías en la Barcelona liberal, entre la educación, el comercio y la ciencia, en: José Pardo-Tomás, Alfons Zarzoso, Mauricio Sánchez, eds. Cuerpos mostrados. Regímenes de exhibición de lo humano. Barcelona y Madrid, siglos XVII-XX, México, Siglo XXI-UNAM, 2019: 55-75.

On pomological collections and their trace in the Loire Valley

By José Pardo-Tomás, Institución Milá y Fontanals-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas

In the summer of 2013, books, furniture and various objects that had belonged to the cabinet of curiosities that the Salvador family kept in the backroom of their pharmacy in the centre of Barcelona for six generations, from 1626 to 1855, were rescued from the Castell de La Bleda (Alt Penedès, Barcelona). One of the most pleasant surprises of that rescue was the discovery that a notable part of the half thousand fruit models that had formed part of the Pomona española project of José Salvador y Soler (1804-1855) had survived the incuriosity of time (fig. 1). The rescued materials from 2013 were added to the bulk of the Salvador cabinet rescued in 1938 by the Catalan Republican authorities. With them came documents, letters and manuscripts that enabled Xavier Ulled to investigate in depth the personality and work of the last of the Salvador family. A prosperous agricultural entrepreneur, particularly concerned with agronomic innovations in the fields of fruticulture and forestry, José Salvador expanded the naturalistic collections inherited from his ancestors and reoriented them, creating a xylotheque and conceiving the great project of the Pomona española. To carry it out, Salvador commissioned these fruit models, negotiated the sponsorship of the Crown at the Madrid court and launched a subscription to finance the publication of the engravings and texts to accompany the models. The Pomona española would begin by reproducing copies of each and every one of the fruits grown in the kingdom of Spain. But the project did not end there; Salvador exhibited these models in his establishment and offered to teach the agricultural owners of Catalonia the new techniques and advances in fruticulture science.

Fig. 1. Fruit models from the Salvador collection rescued in 2013 and restored by Olga Muñoz for the exhibition Salvadoriana. The cabinet of curiosities of Barcelona (Museu de Ciències Naturals i Institut Botànic de Barcelona, 2014-2016). Photo: Natalia Hervás.

Among the testimonies provided by Ulled, several spoke of the inspirational role played in Salvador’s project by the contact established with Louis Claude Noisette (1772-1849), the French gardener and agronomist. Salvador acquired a copy of the second edition of Le Jardin fruitier histoire et culture des arbres fruitiers (Paris, Audot libraire éditeur, 1833-1839) these volumes are now kept in the Salvador library at the Institut Botànic de Barcelona.

Antoine Noisset (1778-1858), Louis-Claude’s brother, was commissioned in 1822 to design the Jardin des Plantes in Nantes, which he then directed until 1835. Do the fruit models still present at the Nantes Jardin des Plantes come from him or his descendants? We owe it to the kindness of Aurélien Bour, the Jardin’s scientific director, that we were able to consult the complete list of the pieces. There are more than two hundred moulages (most of them of different varieties of pears) which the institution’s database dates between 1850 and 1950, although they may well date from the beginning of this imprecise period. Between 1822 and 1870, several establishments were set up in ‘provincial’ France to teach agronomy; horticulture and fruticulture were part of the theoretical and practical teaching plans of the schools opened in several towns. It seems clear that the acquisition of fruit models – first in wax and plaster, then in papier mâché – was a common practice in these schools. Although historiography has insisted mainly on the great Parisian manufacturers, such as Auzoux, the fact is that – before and after Auzoux, who did not start making botanical pieces until 1872 – there were also opportunities for local mouleurs, such as the nantois Moyon.

It is to Moyon that we owe most of the 60 fruit moulages that are preserved today in the very modern storage rooms of the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle on the outskirts of Nantes, which we were able to handle and photograph freely, thanks to the kindness of Eric Guiho, in charge of the museum’s botanical collections (fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Fruit models from the collection of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle de Nantes. Photos by the author.

In this case, it is possible to know with a little more precision the provenance of the pieces and the context in which they were produced and used. From what can be deduced from the labels and the documentation kept by the museum, these fruit models are much later than those of the Barcelona cabinet and even those of the botanical garden in Nantes. They came to the museum in 1982 from the Nantes École de Commerce, although they were actually made in 1902-1905. They were commissioned for the short-lived Musée Colonial which was set up for the practical teaching of agriculture in the Colonial Section of the School, on the initiative of the industrialist and banker Hyppolite Durand-Gasselin (1839-1939). The theoretical teaching planned for those who studied in the Colonial Section took place at the headquarters of the École, in the old Nantes mint (Hôtel des Monnaies), while the practical teaching, which required vegetable gardens and greenhouse cultivation, was located at the Château du Grand-Blotterau, a few kilometres outside the city, on loan from Durand-Gasselin. This is where the fruit models commissioned from Noyon and the Parisian manufacturer Theveny were made for. Its didactic role was short: in 1909, the Colonial Section closed and the materials were sent to the headquarters of the École de Commerce, in rue Voltaire, wall to wall with the Muséum.

With regard to the pomological collection that today is kept in the natural history museum of the city of Orléans (now known as MOBE: Muséum d’Orléans pour la biodiversité et l’environnement), thanks to the mediation of Philippe Guillet, we contacted Vladimir Jecmenica, head of the botanical collections, who gave us full access to the pieces kept in the storage rooms, as well as providing us with the – otherwise scarce – documentation that the museum has on this collection. Among the documents, we found a report dated 1985, the result of a visit by Madame Evelyn Leterme, an expert in pomology at the Conservatoire Variétal d’Aquitaine, to examine the fruit models. Her diagnosis praised the state of conservation of 86 of the 124 pieces, as well as their quality in terms of their hyper-realistic capacity to reflect even the smallest lenticule, the pubescence of the sepals and the stains due to disease (fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Some specimens from the pomological collection now kept at the MOBE (photos by the author)

However, Leterme left unanswered fundamental questions, such as what materials (apart from plaster, which was obvious) were involved in the manufacture of such perfect models. As for the provenance, she simply stated that the six boxes in which they were found came from the Muséum of La Rochelle and were addressed, dated 1949, to the former curator of the Muséum of Orléans, Paul Sougy. It is therefore in La Rochelle that the research should be pursued. The existence of a formal teaching of agronomy in the Charente-Maritime region from the mid-19th century is a promising clue.

Bibliographical references

Samantha Bazan et al. HerbEnLoire. Catalogue des herbiers recensés en Pays de la Loire, Angers, Université d’Angers, Conservatoire Botanique National de Brest – antenne Pays de la Loire, 2018.

Bernard van den Driesseche, Le jardin des plâtres: un autre regard sur les collections de moulages, en: Rune Frederiksen & Eckart Marchand, eds. Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present, Berlin, De Gruyter, 2010: 635-650.

Déborah Dubald, Capital nature: a history of French municipal museums of natural history, 1795-1870, Florence: European University Institute PhD theses, 2019.

Noël Guillet, Reine Guillet, Le Grand Blottereau: son château, son écrin de verdure, Nantes, Association Doulon-histoire, 2014.

Marta Pérez, Olga Muñoz, Eulàlia Garcia-Franquesa, Conservación-restauración de modelos botánicos de frutas del Gabinete Salvador, Ge-conservación, 9, 2016: 83-95.

Xavier Ulled Bertran, Pomonas y anatomías en la Barcelona liberal, entre la educación, el comercio y la ciencia, en: José Pardo-Tomás, Alfons Zarzoso, Mauricio Sánchez, eds. Cuerpos mostrados. Regímenes de exhibición de lo humano. Barcelona y Madrid, siglos XVII-XX, México, Siglo XXI-UNAM, 2019: 55-75.

The pursuit of interesting specimens in the LMS herbarium

By Neus Nualart, Museu Ciencies Naturals Barcelona (Institut Botànic de Barcelona)

LMS is the acronym of a large collection of 100,000 plant specimens preserved in the reserves of Le Musée Vert of Le Mans (Fig. 1). As its curator, Nicolas Morel, explains to me, the main part of the herbarium contains plants collected in the Sarthe region by local botanists. In 2017 the catalogue of all the collections from the Sarthe region was published with a description of each collection (more information of this project is available online, HerbEnLoire). According to this catalogue there are 65 herbarium collections preserved in Le Musée Vert with plants collected between the 18th and 20th centuries. The largest collection is the one of Monguillon with 17,150 specimens of cryptogam plants which was, in part, studied by my colleague Neus Ibáñez during her stay in Le Mans (a report is available in the SciCoMove blog).

Figure 1. Reserves of Le Musée Vert where the herbarium collections are conserved. © Le Musée Vert

Since one of my research fields is the nomenclature of plants and the typification of new names (to stabilize their interpretation), I was interested in finding some original material in LMS herbarium. In one of my visits to the reserves, two post-it notes included in the Chevallier collection with the indication of type material caught my attention (Fig. 2). Nicolas Morel told me that they were duplicates of specimens of the National Museum of Paris where the holotypes (original material used by an author to describe a new taxon) were preserved. This collection was formed by a bundle of 107 specimens collected between 1898 and 1904 in Algeria. My interest of North African plants encouraged me to learn more about this author and the taxa he published.

Figure 2. Chevallier collection with post-it notes indicating the existence of type material. © Le Musée Vert

Louis Pierre Désiré Chevallier (Melicorne, Sarthe, 1852–Précigné, Sarthe, 1938) was a French clergyman and botanist who worked as a professor. Although his main herbarium was from plants collected in Sarthe, his naturalist interests and his curiosity for the exploration brought him to study the flora of Algeria, a French colony in that time, where he carried out different trips between 1879 and 1904 (Fig. 3). During all his life he collected 50,000 specimens in a herbarium organized in more than 600 volumes. According to the African Plant Database (https://africanplantdatabase.ch/) he proposed ca. 30 new taxa including species, subspecies and varieties. He published three notes about Saharan Flora in 1900, 1903 and 1905 explaining the trips and describing the new taxa he found. He also created an exsiccata to distribute 650 plants in different herbaria and botanists from the entire world, the “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis”.

Figure 3. Chevallier in Ouargla (Algeria) preparing plants for his herbarium collection. Extracted from a La province du Maine 19 (1939) p. 61. © Archives départementales de la Sarthe

Two specimens labeled as types corresponds to Helianthemum brachypodum that was described by Chevallier in page 767 of his “Deuxième note sur la Flore du Sahara” (Chevallier, 1903) but without mentioning any locality or date. In page 678 he explained that he found this new species in Oum-el-Klab on 19th March 1902. In JSTOR portal web (https://plants.jstor.org/) there are many specimens indicated as type or original material tough collected in 1904; they were distributed by Chevallier in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis” with the number 543. Only two specimens in JSTOR are actually the original material collected in 1902 (P00086041, P00086042) and preserved in the National Museum of Paris. Both are part of a single collection, one bearing the original label handwritten by Chevallier (Fig. 4) and the other with a transcription of this original one.

Figure 4. Label handwritten by Chevallier of the specimen preserved in P herbarium of Helianthemum brachypodum. @ MNHN Paris

The two specimens conserved in Le Musée Vert were also handwritten by Chevallier and were collected in Oum-el-Klab on 19th March 1902 (Fig. 5). It is surprising to me that these specimens have less information than the ones preserved in P herbarium, maybe because the former remained in Chevalier’s personal collection for a long time.

Figure 5. Label of the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert that can be considered original material of Helianthemum brachypodium. © Le Musée Vert

The other specimen labeled as type corresponds to Salvia pseudojaminiana, which was described by Chevallier from Hadadra and collected on 10th April 1904 (Chevallier, 1905). This specimen was distributed in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae-algeriensis” with the number 602 as it is indicated in the original publication (Fig. 6).

Figure 6. Original description of Salvia pseudojaminiana with the locality, date and exsiccate number of the original material used to describe this new species. Extracted from Chevallier (1905) p. 442. © Biodiversity Heritage Library

In JSTOR portal web (https://plants.jstor.org/) there are different specimens indicated as original material and preserved in Jena (Germany), Leiden (the Netherlands), Madrid (Spain), Montpellier (France), Washington (USA) and Melbourne (Australia); all of them bear the label of the exsiccate, either handwritten or typewritten (Fig. 7).

Figure 7. Typewritten label of the specimen distributed by Chevallier in the exsiccate “Plantae Saharae algeriensis” with number 602. © MPU herbarium (Montpellier)

In contrast, the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert of Salvia pseudojaminiana has a handwritten label with only some information about the locality and the date of collection (Fig. 8). As in the case of the original specimen of Helianthemum brachypodum it seems that this specimen was included in his personal collection.

Figure 8. Label of the specimen preserved in Le Musée Vert that can be considered original material of Salvia pseudojaminiana. © Le Musée Vert

A review of all 107 specimens that compose the Chevallier collection of Le Musée Vert has allowed me to find some original material of some varieties described by this author in Algeria. Six specimens are type material of the following names: Artemisia judaica var. sahariensis, Chrysanthemum macrocarpum var. aureum, Fagonia latifolia var. pinguis, Lippia nodiflora var. suborbicularis, Mentha rotundifolia var. longispicata, and Retama raetam var. pallens.

Although none of these names are accepted today (except Salvia pseudojaminiana), their study is necessary to improve the knowledge about the taxonomy of Algerian plants. Moreover, none of the names proposed by Chevallier for Algerian plants have been studied yet from a typification point of view. Therefore, all original material of this author is important to understand his interpretation for the new taxa he described. In short, the material found in Le Musée Vert can be of great interest of taxonomists interested in North African flora.

References

Chevallier, L. 1903. Deuxième note sur la flora du Sahara. Bull. Herb. Boiss., sér. 2, 3: 669–684. 

Chevallier, L. 1905. Troisième note sur la flora du Sahara. Bull. Herb. Boiss., sér. 2, 5: 440–444. 

Herbarium specimens exchange network at the end of the 19th century: the case of Frederic Trèmols

By Laura Gavioli, Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Institut Botànic de Barcelona), University of Barcelona.

During my visit at the herbarium of the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (P) I was able to find a good number of specimens collected by Frederic Trèmols (Cadaqués 1831–1900). Trèmols was professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona, and also pharmacist and botanist. He was member of important scientific organizations, including the Real Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona, the Société Botanique de France (of which he was also president between 1880 and 1885), and the Société Helvétique pour l’Échange des Plantes. He played a prominent role in the Societat Botànica Barcelonesa, being its secretary from its creation until the cessation of activities (1872–1878). As a botanist, his masterpiece was an herbarium of 12,951 specimens that he completed thanks to his own collections and the contributions of international botanists and botanical societies with which he collaborated. This herbarium, kept at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, is one of the first herbaria in Catalonia, largely made up of European plants.

Below you will find the botanists who caused the dispersal of Trèmols specimens in different parts of Europe although, nowadays, all of them are again reunited in the P herbarium. For each author different information is given: (i) a brief biographical note, (ii) data about their relationships with Trèmols and, whenever possible, (iii) an explanation of how the samples of the Catalan botanist arrived in their herbaria. To undersand the relationships between each author and Trèmols, I did a search in the Trèmols herbarium looking for samples of these authors. As a result, I am providing all the specimens collected for each author that are preserved in this collection. The aspect I want to highlight is whether there were direct exchanges between Trèmols and these botanists or, alternatively, whether the sending of plants took place through exchange companies.

Claude Albert Gérard (Vittel 1837–Thonon-les-Bains 1904) worked like Conservator des Hypothèques and, as a botanist, he mainly dealt with phanerogams, cryptogams and fungi. He collected mainly in eastern France and in Haute-Savoie, Ardennes and Bretagne assembling an herbarium of over 10,000 specimens. His herbarium, or at least parts of it, was sold in 1935 by Jean Auguste Ambroise Callé (1906–1981) to Bernard Guy Gaston Baron de Retz de Serviès (1910–2004), but it is unknown how J. Callé came into possession of the Gérard herbarium.

In the Trèmols herbarium we find 36 specimens collected by Gérard: 20 specimens that arrived directly by him, and 16 that arrived through plant exchange societies (mainly the Société Helvétique).

Sébastien René Lenormand (Condé-sur-Noireau 1796–Saint-Germain-de-Tallevende 1871) was a French lawyer, sub-prefect of Vire, and an amateur botanist who specialized in the field of phycology. Without ever leaving France he created a herbarium mainly composed of algae species, with a large number of specimens from botanists-travellers around the world. His herbarium was donated to Caen Botanical Garden, and it still survives despite the damage it suffered following the Allied bombings of 1944.

There is no sample collected by Lenormand in the Trèmols herbarium because the years of activity of both botanists only partially overlapped while they interests were different (algae for Lenormand and higher plants for Trèmols). It is likely that the Trèmols specimens arrived to Lenormand through Henry van Heurck, a Belgian botanist who sent and received herbarium samples from all over the world, and who was correspondent for both of them.

Hector Léveillé (Le Mans 1864–1918) was clergyman and botanist, and member of the Missions étrangères of Paris. In 1887 he travelled to India where he became a specialist in the flora of the Far East, mainly China and Korea. In 1891 he returned to Le Mans where he founded the magazine Le Monde des Plantes and the society Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique of which he became the secretary and director of its journal Bulletin de Géographie Botanique. He also founded the Association Française de Botaniques with Georges Rouy. His remarkable herbarium was acquired by George Forrest, a collector in Yunnan of China, and subsequently by the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh.

Although there are no specimens collected by Léveillé in the Trèmols herbarium, we know that the two botanists were in correspondence thanks to two letters sent in 1895 by Trèmols to Rouy (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 592 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris). In these two letters Trèmols explains that he is arranging the acceptance of the two French botanists as members of the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona and that he will send specimens to the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique. This fact explains the presence of specimens collected by Trèmols in the Léveillé herbarium, while the absence of specimens collected by Léveillé in Trèmols herbarium can be thought of as non-reciprocity of these shipments.

Emmanuel Drake del Castillo (Paris 1855–Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot 1904) was the heir of a very rich family, and he devoted himself to botany. From 1884 until his death, he was the mayor of Saint-Cyran-du-Jambot. He studied the flora of Madagascar and created an herbarium of more than 500,000 specimens, which his widow donated to the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. He was president of the Société Botanique de France in the year 1900.

There are no specimens of Drake in the Trèmols herbarium; therefore, they did not exchange plants directly and the Trèmols specimens arrived in Drake herbarium through other botanists such as Rouy or van Heurck.

Eugène-Laurent Berher (Épinal 1822–1900) was doctor, botanist and bryologist in Épinal and he specialized in vascular plants, mosses and lichens. He mainly collected in the Vosges department and published a catalogue of vascular plants and one of the liverworts and mosses of Alsace.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 52 specimens collected by Berher, mainly coming from the Société Helvétique, just like the specimes of Trèmols preserved in Berher herbarium.

Georges Rouy (Paris 1851–Asnières 1924) was born into a wealthy family, and he became a business administrator, journalist, secretary of a press union and a botanist. He collected plants in France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and Algeria, but he also enriched his herbarium thanks to the plant exchanges with many botanists and by purchase. His herbarium contains more than 500,000 samples; the vascular cryptogams are preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris, and the rest in the University of Lyon. He was director of the Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique and vice-president of the Société Botanique de France.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are five specimens collected by Rouy and 33 of an exsiccata linked to Rouy (the transcription of the label’s heading of the exsiccate is: Herbier G. ROUY à PARIS 22 PASSAGE SAULNIER). These specimens were collected by ten different botanists like Julien Foucaud (1847–1904), Eugénio Schmitz (collector years 1868–1882), Eugène Jordan de Puyfol (1819–1891), Agostino Todaro (1818–1892), and Édouard Timbal-Lagrave (1819–1888).

There is evidence that the two botanists exchanged letters and plants, thanks to the existence of a letter from Trèmols to Rouy in 1895 in which he announced that he and Levéillé had been accepted as correspondent members of the Reial Academia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (manuscripts Ms 2617 / 593 preserved in the Correspondance scientifique de Georges Rouy collection of the library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris).

Xavier Vendrely (Champagney 1837–1908) was pharmacist and a botanist specialized in the flora of Franche-Comté. He created an important herbarium, with about 30,000 specimens from Western and Central Europe, the Balkans, America, Africa and even Australia and Nepal, now preserved in the National Museum of Natural History of Paris.

The Trèmols herbarium includes 24 specimens collected by Vendrely, mostly coming from the Société Helvétique of which both were members.

Ludovic Giraudias (Saintes 1848–Orléans 1922) was receveur de l’enregistrement [tax collector] in Asprières, composer and amateur botanist. He mainly collected in Aveyron and was the founder of the Association Pyrénéenne pour l’Échange des Plantes.

In the Trèmols herbarium there are 25 specimens sent by Giraudias. The two botanists most likely exchanged their specimens directly, although or exchange through societies (such as Société Helvétique and Académie Internationale de Géographie Botanique) cannot be ruled out.

All this material gives us a clear idea of the amount of exchanges that existed at that time directly between botanists or through botanic societies or academies. All the authors mentioned above were members of these societies, which allowed them to be in relation with other botanists. All these facts explain quite well the presence in the P herbarium of a certain number of samples of a Catalan botanist who probably never went to Paris but was very active in the exchange of plants.

All images of specimens have been taken down from the National Museum of Natural History of Paris and those of the letters have been taken from Central Library of the National Museum of Natural History of Paris. Copyright: © MUSÉUM NATIONAL D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE

Sobre la extranjería del cactus

By Irina Podgorny, CONICET/Archivo Histórico del Museo de La Plata

“Con la excepción de dos especies halladas en el este de Asia, la familia de las cactáceas pertenece con exclusividad al Nuevo Mundo donde se extiende desde los 40° de latitud norte hasta los 40° de latitud sur y desde el nivel del mar hasta el límite de las nieves eternas. La mayoría crece en la zona tórrida pero algunas formas prevalecen en las zonas templadas. En las regiones tropicales crecen a mayor altura, allí encuentran un clima más fresco”. Con ese pasaje de su Introducción a la Geografía de las Plantas, publicada en 1836, el botánico alemán Franz Ferdinand Meyen presentaba los cactus a los jardineros del Este y Norte de Europa.

Meyen, un seguidor de las ideas de Alexander von Humboldt sobre la distribución de los vegetales según la latitud y altitud, señalaba la riqueza de esta familia de la cual, hasta entonces, se conocían unas 200 especies. Confiaba en que el número se duplicaría a la brevedad, con la exploración minuciosa de las montañas americanas.

Pero, se equivocaba: hoy las especies de cactus se cuentan por miles, un inventario cuya historia está llena de complicaciones y de idas y vueltas, empezando por sus nombres, una mezcla de tradiciones botánicas y transferencias de todo tipo. “Tuna” y “nopal”, por ejemplo, son vocablos derivados de palabras taínas y nahuas mientras cactus y opuntia son términos latinos tomados de la historia natural de Plinio, donde se habla de unas plantas espinosas del Viejo Mundo y que, desconociéndose a qué se refería, fueron elegidas para designar a las pinchudas llegadas del otro lado del océano.

Las dificultades continúan con sus tallos suculentos que no se transportan ni se conservan en los herbarios. O mejor dicho y a diferencia de otras plantas, son difíciles de comprimir: todo intento de disecarlos entre dos hojas de papel, los deforma y los vuelve irreconocibles a los efectos de la comparación.

Y sus flores, una de las claves de la clasificación botánica, son efímeras, o se abren solo por la noche. Tan pasajeras como los viajeros de paso pesado; la observación, por ello, se hizo esperar a que florecieran bajo un techo de cristal. Llamativas y hermosas, las flores de los cactus –algunas similares a las orquídeas– se convirtieron en una de las estrellas de las regiones equinocciales que, en sucesivas modas, conquistaron el mercado europeo.

Meyen escribió esas líneas cuando el norte de Europa empezaba a recibirlas gracias a la recreación de las condiciones climáticas y del suelo americano en el frío de París, Berlín y Londres. Esta era, al menos, la pretensión de la nueva industria de los invernaderos y conservatorios destinada al jardinero moderno que, desde principios del siglo XIX, promovió entre las clases medias y urbanas, el cultivo doméstico de la naturaleza artificial.

Una belleza creada gracias a la química de los fertilizantes y la quema de carbón para producir energía, calefaccionar los cuartos y transportar con velocidad toda clase de producto perecedero. En ese contexto, los cactus cruzaron el paralelo 40 y se instalaron en la estética hortícola del norte de Europa porque, en el sur, ya estaban y desde hacía varios siglos.

De todas las familias de plantas americanas, los cactus fueron los más difundidos en el Viejo Mundo, en parte porque la reserva de agua de sus tallos les permitía resistir el cruce del Atlántico y también porque Lisboa, Valencia, Roma, están en los bordes del paralelo 40. El Mediterráneo, hoy sabemos, comparte muchos rasgos de la temperatura y del régimen de lluvias del clima de California, uno de los paraísos terrestres para los cactus y las plantas suculentas. A decir verdad, apenas notaron la mudanza y hoy, los turistas, tampoco se enteran del carácter humano, de estas plantas que adornan los acantilados y las postales de Portofino o el Algarve.

Las tunas (Cactus ficus-indica y Opuntia) pisaron la península ibérica unas décadas después de los viajes Colón. Desde allí, se expandieron por los bordes del Mediterráneo, donde se naturalizaron o se utilizaron para construir cercos y defensas militares. No era para menos: la experiencia de cualquier jardinero de balcón alcanza para comprobar que las tunas se reproducen como yuyo.

Basta con que el gato las quiebre para que, sin hacer nada y de cualquier parte, broten nuevas raíces. Basta y sobra: al año siguiente, ese hijo, dará flores rojas o amarillas y, con mucho sol, hasta frutos, esos que en Europa se conocieron como higo de las Indias y, en francés, figuier de Barbarie, es decir higos del Magreb donde también se multiplicaron como los panes y las mieses.

En esas zonas, hasta mediados del siglo XVIII, se intentó cultivarlos para producir, como en Nueva España, la grana cochinilla, el insecto americano del que se extrae el preciado carmín. Nunca se pudo alcanzar los niveles de rinde de los mexicanos ni la tecnología allí desarrollada aún antes de la conquista, donde el nopal cultivado y silvestre estaba muy extendido.

Pero los cactus no se trasladaron solos. En los mismos barcos, alguien tuvo la ocurrencia de traerse algunos agaves. O pitas como se los llama en el Río de la Plata, el maguey del Caribe, la fuente del hilo sisal, del papel, del pulque y de otros aguardientes, otro género carnoso y con espinas pero, en este caso, de la familia de las asparagáceas, grupo que engloba a los espárragos comestibles.

La capacidad reproductiva de los agaves, originarios de la región árida del norte de México, el sur de los Estados Unidos y Colombia, los llevó por los mismos caminos y, según los registros históricos de la región francesa de la Provenza y la Costa Azul, los agaves ya se habrían avistado en Toulon hacia fines del siglo XVI. Según ese censo, el número y la zona de crecimiento de los agaves se mantuvieron estables hasta que explotaron en el siglo XIX.

Hoy es raro voltear la cabeza sin toparse con una de estas plantas que, en el verano de 2021, florecieron con furor y, a esta altura, deben haber muerto. Como en el siglo pasado me explicó mi madre con rigor de abogada: la flor, de dimensiones gigantescas, requiere tanto esfuerzo en su gestación que, al producirla, la planta se consume y fallece no sin antes producir cientos de semillas. Dura lex, sed lex.

El sacrificio de los agaves por el bien de la posteridad no pasó desapercibido para los administradores del paisaje mediterráneo, una región caracterizada por las sequías prolongadas y susceptible de ser devorada por el fuego.

Ya en 1927, L’Intransigeant de París, el vespertino de derecha más grande de la década de 1920, con una tirada de alrededor de 400.000 ejemplares, se hacía eco de una campaña de un ingeniero italiano que proponía sembrar agaves en la Costa Azul, las Bocas del Ródano y la Provenza para proteger el bosque nativo de los peligros incendiarios.

Una medida que no se terminó de adoptar pero que se reflotó varias veces y hoy se sigue discutiendo en California, donde en 2005, el Departamento Forestal adoptó el agave azul como cortina cortafuego.

El agave, en efecto, es un género vegetal que se quema con una intensidad más baja que las otras. En Francia, la discusión no se acaba: entre los que quieren extirparlos por su carácter invasivo y foráneo y quienes recuerdan sus bondades, está toda esa gente que ni los ve, que les saca fotos y regresa a casa con la vaga sensación de haberse pinchado con algo. Un cactus, un agave, qué más da. Alguna espina de esas plantas que crecen naturalmente en cualquier lado.

Les correspondances du botaniste François Crépin (1830–1903)

Par Denis Diagre-Vanderpelen, Meise Botanical Garden

Le Jardin botanique de Meise recèle une quantité extraordinaire de courriers de botanistes et autres scientifiques, professionnels et amateurs, plus ou moins renommés. Comme il s’agit, en général, de lettres envoyées des quatre coins du monde aux chercheurs de cette institution, ces collections offrent un magnifique tableau des réseaux scientifiques des deux derniers siècles. Leur dépouillement offre une magnifique opportunité de saisir la circulation des idées, certes, mais aussi celle des échantillons. On peut ainsi tracer les mouvements des herbiers qui constituèrent longtemps un des piliers du travail des botanistes, et qui conservent un rôle central dans la pratique de la taxinomie et de la nomenclature. Ces dernières constituent des gestes préliminaires et souvent indispensables au déploiement d’autres champs disciplinaires, comme la conservation, la phytogéographie ou l’écologie, par exemple. Source pour le scientifique contemporain, l’herbier, les étiquettes et les courriers qui l’accompagnent en sont également pour l’historien.ne des sciences, qui y glanera une myriade d’informations sur les pratiques scientifiques des siècles passés.

Parmi les collections de lettres que conserve le Jardin botanique de Meise, il en est une qui mérite une attention particulière, ne serait-ce parce qu’elle est, depuis quelques années, abondamment exploitée. Il s’agit des milliers de lettres reçues par François Crépin, floristicien et rhodologue de haute renommée, co-fondateur et administrateur de la Société royale de Botanique de Belgique (fondée en 1862), et, finalement, directeur du Jardin botanique de l’Etat belge de 1876 à 1901.

Auteur d’un Manuel de la Flore de Belgique (1ère édition en 1860) révéré, ses correspondances « entrantes » avec les botanistes belges et des pays limitrophes permettent d’assister, presque au jour le jour, à la genèse de ce fameux ouvrage. On y découvre un homme qui recueille le fruit des collectes d’un réseau de botanistes amateurs, et qui les pilote ici et là, afin de vérifier ses intuitions et de compléter son opus magnum. Ce sont des milliers d’observations et des centaines de listes d’herborisation que cette collection nous donne à voir, dévoilant les interrogations des hommes du temps et certains des grands débats qui l’agitèrent : Espèce indigène ou naturalisée et, dans ce cas, faut-il l’inclure dans une flore nationale ? Station menacée ou hors de danger ? Quels sont les ennemis de la flore indigène (agriculture, industrie, collecte irraisonnée…) ? Quelles mesures faut-il prendre pour conserver les populations de plantes rares ? Quelle est la distribution de telle espèce et depuis quand ?

Par ailleurs, cette remarquable collection de lettres nous permet d’assister à la naissance d’une société scientifique – la Société royale de Botanique de Belgique – et de suivre les tourments et les bonheurs de cette association scientifique… qui comptait une majorité d’amateurs et de profanes dans ses rangs. Comment contenter les professionnels sans décourager les botanistes du dimanche ? Comment offrir un Bulletin à la fois digne d’être échangé avec les sociétés étrangères et propre à satisfaire les attentes du bourgeois-botaniste ? Comment être à la fois creuset scientifique et lieu de sociabilité bourgeoise ? Comment, à partir d’une vocation floristique, étendre ses activités à d’autres champs de la recherche botanique, éventuellement cultivés dans les universités ? Voilà quelques-unes des questions que, à travers ces archives, l’historien.ne peut saisir à bras-le-corps.

Finalement, c’est l’histoire du projet dont François Crépin espérait qu’il assurerait sa réputation de taxinomiste d’élite, que ces papiers éclairent : la monographie des roses… Réunissant, par achat, échange ou collecte personnelle, des milliers d’échantillons du prestigieux genre Rosa en un herbier unique (près de 45.000 feuilles, actuellement conservées au Jardin botanique de Meise), l’homme voulut réaliser une classification complète de ce genre complexe. Entreprise qui avorta, certes, mais les archives que nous savons montrent néanmoins le travail quotidien d’un botaniste de la fin du XIXe siècle, un homme qui défend la taxinomie contre des pratiques scientifiques nouvelles,  qui voit la classification morphologique buter sur la variabilité et l’ancienne hégémonie de cette approche contestée par de jeunes anatomistes… Finalement, ces documents révèlent un homme qui se brise sur la question – cruciale, pour son entreprise – de l’espèce et se convertit au transformisme.

Sources aux usages multiples, autorisant une multitude de questionnements, constituant une véritable « carotte » dans l’épaisseur de l’histoire des sciences, les correspondances de François Crépin mobilisent les chercheurs du Jardin botanique de Meise depuis des années, maintenant. C’est la raison pour laquelle elles ont été mises à l’honneur dans une exposition grand public, hébergée sur Europeana, et également pour laquelle plusieurs milliers de lettres conservées dans notre institution ont déjà été décrites dans le catalogue de notre bibliothèque, et scannées.

Collecting for Seed Testing

By Anaïs Got, University of Angers

In agriculture it all starts with a seed. In 1869 the German agronomist Friedrich Nobbe founded and theorised a new agronomic speciality called “Seed Testing”. From the end of the 19th century, it spread as a set of practices and knowledge built and mobilised by scientists, also called agro-botanists, who identified seeds as fundamental elements on which States should intervene in order to improve national agriculture. To this end, they developed a set of methods and techniques essentially based on the scientific examination of characteristics and faculties of seeds. From then on, seed agro-botanists asserted themselves both as agronomists, i.e. with a resolutely agricultural perspective and purpose, and also traditionally as botanists of a botany intended to be applied to the seeds of cultivated species as plant reproductive organs.

Seed testing stations had their own seed collections, as here in the French station around 1910 (Archives of the French National Seed Testing Station, 2 ARCH 390, glass plate, 18×13cm, by. 1910)

Agro-botanists operated in laboratories called seed testing stations where they undertook to answer technically and scientifically all the questions that agricultural and industrial seed application raised. To this end, they carried out both technical analyses and examinations of seed samples sent to them by the seed industry, as well as a variety of scientific research on seeds.

From the beginning, the practice of collection has therefore been fundamental and recurrent in Seed Testing. If analytical activities generated punctual collections of samples, they also made it possible to collect a variety of agricultural seeds preserved by the seed testing stations in order to be used as a guide and reference for subsequent manipulations. The experimental work also allowed seed collections to be made. Finally, from a transnational perspective, it appears that the agro-botanists of different seed testing stations, who have been very connected to each other since the end of the 19th century, frequently exchanged seeds in order to participate in comparative campaigns or to feed their respective collections.

Inventories kept track of seed samples kept in seed testing stations. This extract lists the varieties of wheat and their origins (Archives of the French National Seed Testing Station, 1 ARCH 18, manuscript notebook, 1902-1907)

In short, Seed Testing Stations started to collect seeds as the basic material, in turn support and referent, of their scientific and technical activities. In addition, collecting was at the heart of scientific process aimed at identifying and referencing the normal and the abnormal in order to understand and rationalise knowledge. Thus, new samples were listed, identified, analysed and then preserved in a scientific approach. During the 20the century, photography renewed traditional seed collection practices for obvious practical reasons: collections of Seed Testing Stations became then more iconographic.

Gabinet Salvador (video)

One of our researchers, Neus Ibáñez, talks about preventive conservation of the Salvador Cabinet in the Institut Botànic de Barcelona (Barcelona Botanical Institute, IBB) under the guidance of the Preventative Conservation Laboratory at the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona (Natural Science Museum of Barcelona).

To learn more about the Salvador Cabinet, read our previous blog posts:

The Salvador collection in Barcelona

by José Pardo-Tomás, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica

Salvador’s Cabinet of Curiosities

by Neus Ibáñez, Museu Ciencies Naturals Barcelona (Institut Botanic de Barcelona)

The Salvador collection in Barcelona

By José Pardo-Tomás, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científica, Spain

When we think about the Salvador collection some aspects stand out. The first one is that it’s a collection that has been in the hands of the same family since its foundation – in the first half of the 17th century – until it was acquired and converted into a scientific heritage of Barcelona’s city, already in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this long process, the collection went through different stages, through some transformations and resignifications, that accompanied the interests and aspirations of the heir responsible for it at the moment. In this sense, we can divide this history in three phases: the first, of formation and consolidation of the cabinet; the second, the reconfiguration of the cabinet as a museum in 19th century and, finally, the resurgence of the cabinet as a heritage asset in 21st century.

The accidental premature death of José Salvador (the last active member of the dynasty) in 1855 brought some time after to the closure of the museum at Barcelona. Around 1870, the cabinet and all its contents (furniture, library, naturalia and artificialia pieces) were moved to one of the many countryside properties of the family. Nothing was heard about the cabinet until 1923 when two curators of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences established contact with the owners. But the negotiations for trying to recover the scientific collections for the public failed.

In 1938, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, Republican Catalan Government issued a decree by which Salvador collection had to be incorporated into the public heritage and deposited in the Botanical Institute of Barcelona, which had been created four years earlier, as a dependence of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences. At the end of 1945, the Barcelona City Council acquired the Salvador legacy and allowed for some dissemination of the existence of the collection, mainly of the herbarium, the most highly valued piece by the botanists of the Institute. But the constant funding problems during the Franco’s dictatorship and a large part of the democratic transition period, together with certain weaknesses in the institutional insertion of the Botanical Institute considerably delayed a proper cataloguing of the collection and a museum project to bring the collection to the public.

Until the end of the 20th century, only a few scholars had accessed the collection and documents of the Salvador family. Some effort to popularize the history of the cabinet and searching for funding and institutional support in order to return it to the public in a way that would ensure its proper conservation and use was made but with scarce success. Based on the new agreement between the CSIC (Spanish Scientific Research Council) and the Barcelona City Council, it was decided to erect a new building for the Botanical Institute, inaugurated in 2003. Here, finally Salvador Collection had to have its own space in the best conditions of conservation and, at the same time, open to viewing by the public. Finally, in the Spring of 2014 opened the exhibition Salvadoriana: the cabinet of curiosities of Barcelona, which remained open until May 2016 in the large room adjacent to the Salvador Room in the Botanical Institute, where the restored cabinet was exhibited and is still exhibited today.

Salvadoriana was born as a project which gave its first step cataloguing and restoring the pieces of the collection. In fact, all the pieces (more than 15,000 items) were restored using the most appropriate technical and scientific criteria: respect for the original, minimum intervention, compatibility of added materials, reversibility of the treatments and graphic documentation of the entire process. Hundreds of pieces were dry-cleaned and permanently wrapped, complete specimens were restored and the contents of the drawers of the original cabinets were cleaned and mounted. Furthermore, the polychrome doors of the original cabinets were restored, together with the material from the most recent find.

This long and often winding road to get here poses several challenges. There is still much work to be done in the museography for exhibit the collection to different public maybe in different spaces (both virtual or real). As well as there is still much work to be done in the field of the and scientific and historical research. The documents of the family archive, a large part of the correspondence, the evolution of the family’s business and its relation to scientific practices, the visitors to the cabinet before and after its conversion in Museo Salvador between 1830 and 1870, the connection of the Salvador cabinet of curiosities with the collections of the Barcelona Museum of Natural Sciences, etc. Above all, when thinking about the participation of different kinds of natural history collections in a “regional” or “provincial” city as Barcelona, putting together with other European case studies in a project such as SciCoMove.