General information
The Leiden branch of the National Herbarium of The Netherlands, formerly the “Rijksherbarium” was founded by Royal Decree of King William I in 1829. The earliest collections were those made in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) by C.L. Blume, the first director of the institute, and the collections assembled by P.F. Siebold during his first stay in Japan (1823-1829).
Already very soon in its history the botanical collections of the Leiden University were added. Amongst them the collections of A. and D. van Royen, both director of the Leiden botanical garden in the 18th century. The herbarium of A. van Royen is one of the few Linnaeus has studied during his visit to The Netherlands and is now important because it contains many Linnean type specimens. Not only the loose-leafed herbaria, but also the old herbaria in book form kept at the University library, like those made by Rauwolff in the 16th century, were transferred.
The collections of the Leiden branch have now grown to over 4 million specimens, including extensive wood and liquid preserved collections. Not only vascular plants, but also collections of non-vascular plants and fungi are present. The emphasis of the vascular plant collections is on the Malesian region. The collections still grow by exchange of plants with other institutes, gifts, and by active collecting programmes.The Utrecht branch dates back to 1816. Their collections now include over 800,000 specimens of vascular, and non-vascular plants, and 37,500 wood samples, mainly from tropical America. After the closure of the Utrecht herbarium these collections were moved to Leiden in 2009.
The year 1896 can be seen as the foundation date of the Wageningen herbarium, although substantial herbarium collections were already present before that date. Their collections are focussed on the flora of tropical Africa, and on cultivated plants and their wild relatives, and consist of approximately 800,000 specimens, supplemented by about 20,000 liquid-preserved specimens and 5,000 wood samples, numerous botanical illustrations and a specialised library. Further information on the Wageningen collections is available on their website.
In 1999 these three university herbaria merged into the National Herbarium of the Netherlands (NHN). Because the emphasis of their respective collections is on three different regions in the world, they add up to a herbarium of world stature. Not only in numbers, all together close to over 5,5 million specimens, but also because of the many unique collections present.
