The herbarium collections
The herbarium of the Wageningen branch of the Nationaal Herbarium Nederland is also known under the Latin name "Herbarium Vadense". The acronym according to the Index Herbarium is WAG. The major part of the collection consists of dried plants mounted on herbarium sheets, but also comprises a fair amount of special collections. The most important special collections are the wood sample collection, the spirit collection (plant material conserved on alcohol), the collection of dried fruits, a seed collection and a slide collection. A new, but fast growing, special collection is that of DNA samples. The herbarium with all its special collections and facilities can now be visited using a SYNTHESYS grant (for citizens of EU, EU-candidate or EU-associated counties plus USA and Canada)
Dry herbarium
The dried plant collection consists of about 800.000 sheets stored in alphabetical order for species within genera, genera within families, where families are alphabetically ordered in the divisions Angiosperms, Gymnosperms, ferns and fern allies, mosses and lichens, and Fungi. The majority of the samples originates from Africa. Many of our collections from tropical Africa were gathered in the past 50 years by our own staff, collecting material in almost all African countries. The most important countries in which material was collected are Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and Madagascar. In addition to these own collections, a fair amount of material was obtained by exchange with other herbaria that had material from Africa available.
Collectors which have contributed substantially to our collection, and of which the first set is usually available in Wageningen, are: H.J. Beentje, W. Beijerinck, J. Bokdam, B.K. Boom, J.J. Bos, F.J. Breteler, J. de Bruijn, C. Geerling, E.M.C. Groenendijk, J.W.A. Jansen, P.C.M. Jansen, J. Jeswiet, C.C.H. Jongkind, J. de Koning, A.J.M. Leeuwenberg, L.J.G. van der Maesen, F.I. van Nek, J.M. Reitsma, R.R. Schippers, M.S.M. Sosef, L.A. Springer, P. Vermeulen, C. Versteegh, A.G. Voorhoeve, J.J. Wieringa, J.J.F.E. de Wilde, W.J.J.O. de Wilde (only African collections, Azian collections are kept in Leiden H.C.D. de Wit, P. Wit and A.P.M. van der Zon. The Wageningen herbarium includes important duplicate sets of, among others, J.G. Adam, B. Balansa, J.W. Baldwin jr., P.E. Boissier, E. Bourgeau, A. Chevalier, A. Dietrich, K. Dinter, J.V.G. do P. Espirito Santo, T. von Heldreich, R.F. Hohenacker, E. Huet du Pavillon, H. Humbert, T.-J. Klaine, K.G.T. Kotschy, G.M.P.C. Le Testu, R. Letouzey, A.M. Louis, J.K. Morton, F.W. Noë, T.G. Orphanides, C. Pinard, A.G.H. Rudatis, G.H.W. Schimper, F.R.R. Schlechter, M. Schlechter, A.F. Stolz, C.M. Wilks and G.A. Zenker. Some of these duplicate collections, particularly those from German collectors collected around 1900, were acquired in 1984 when the collections of African higher plants from Groningen (GRO) were transferred to Wageningen. An important collection kept at Wageningen is a part of the Clifford Herbarium (1685-1760), which is kept as a separate collection.
Wageningen collectors have always been 'broad' collectors, resulting in nearly all higher plant families being well represented in the herbarium. These collectors of course tend to put a little more effort into collecting plants of their own speciality or that of their colleagues. This has resulted in some families or genera being relatively over-represented in the Wageningen herbarium. This concerns mainly Apocynaceae, Begoniaceae, Combretaceae, Connaraceae, Dichapetalaceae, Dracaena, Leguminosae, Loganiaceae (s.l. in old classifications), Rinorea and Rubus. Because the older generations of Wageningen collectors usually were forestry engineers, they frequently gave some special attention to trees. Therefore trees, even the forest giants, are fairly well represented in our collection, while they are often extremely underrepresented in other herbaria due to the great difficulties to obtain the material.Since the Wageningen University originally is the agricultural university of The Netherlands, another emphasis in the collection is found by cultivated plants, both food plants and ornamentals.
Alcohol or spirit collection
Our spirit collection comprises alcohol-preserved materials (e.g. flowers, fruits, stems, leaves, wood or a combination thereof) of 22.000 plants. For an even larger part as is the case for the dried plant material the alcohol preserved material originates in Africa. Our spirit collection is very large when compared to those of other institutes, and especially for African plants it has no equal. Alcohol preserved material offers opportunities for anatomical and morphological research that have become impossible on dried material. Our facility is not only used by botanists from Wageningen, but is world-wide known as a rich source of material, as is shown by recent publications of e.g. Ronse De Craene (2002) and Tucker (2001, 2002a, 2002b) using our material, which would have been impossible without this alcohol collection.
Wood sample collection
The wood sample collection contains at the moment about 18.000 samples. These samples can be used for anatomical research of wood, but are also important for instance for macromorphological descriptions of bark and wood of trees, shrubs and lianas. A great scientific advantage of the Wageningen wood sample collection is that almost all samples are vouchered, meaning they are affiliated to a herbarium sheet. By this affiliation the identity of the sample can always be checked.
Dry fruit collection
Some plants (mainly tropical trees and lianas) produce fruits that are too large or too unmanageable to mount on a herbarium sheet. These fruits are, after being dried, kept separately in paper bags, which are kept on their turn in separate herbarium boxes, sorted on taxon name. At present these boxes are stored in the main herbarium, grouped per family at the end of the ordinary herbarium of the concerning family.
Seed collection
Our separate seed collection mainly concerns a historic collection, mainly acquired from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT).
These seed collections often do not have an associated herbarium sheet and are of minor value for botany. However, these seeds are often obtained from cultivated or otherwise used plants, and are a record of their use. Most seeds that are collected in our present age are collected with voucher material and are usually stored together with that voucher.
DNA samples
While collection wild plants, of some of these plants also separate DNA samples are made since 1994. The DNA samples consist of some leaf or flower material which is dried quickly without heating by adding some dry silica-gel. These samples are kept to enable molecular research. Most of the DNA samples made so far concern Annonaceae, Begoniaceae, Cruciferae (Brassicaceae), Leguminosae (Fabaceae s.l., especially Caesalpinioideae), Loranthaceae, Malpighiaceae, Olacaceae, Plantaginaceae, Rubiaceae and Violaceae. A list of samples in our herbarium database that are provided with DNA samples can be downloaded as an excel sheet. The conditions to use these silica-gel dried DNA samples, or to use parts of our herbarium material, for DNA research are laid down in our DNA sampling protocol.
In addition the genus Solanum has been sampled extensively in gene banks.
Slide collection
Since 1950 a slide collections was build which includes at the moment about 70.000 slides. This collection is stored separately in a chamber with climate control. The slides that are intensively used for educational purposes have already been digitised.
Digitalization
The past ten years we have been working on the electronic accessibility of our collections. For this purpose our collections have been entered in a herbarium database. We use Brahms. Using Brahms we administrate all curational tasks. Next to curation, our database is a powerful research tool for e.g. biodiversity assessments and preparing checklists. We also use this database to distribute the knowledge kept in our herbarium over the world. All types in our collection have already been entered in the database and include also a digital photo of the sheet. These collections, including their photo's can be assessed using the internet as part of the complete online databases of Wageningen, Utrecht and Leiden which available on the internet as one of the database groups presented by Brahms On Line. Not all fields can be consulted, but the most important ones are available at the moment.
Most digitised collections concern plants from Gabon; together with Missouri Botanical Garden we have databased 95% of all collections from Gabon that are available worldwide. We are currently entering all collections we hold from West- and Central Africa and those of Ethiopia. The top ten of collections per country present in our database after Gabon (ranking high to low) is: Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Benin, Ethiopia, Liberia, Nigeria, Congo (Kinshasa), Ghana, Madagascar and Sierra Leone.