Special collections

Our herbarium holds over 67 000 archival vascular plants, ferns, mosses, fungi, algae and lichens collected as far back as 1850 by monchs of the Beuron monastery. The monastry received further collections from the inheritance of local naturalists such as Franz Sautermeister and Eberhard Weigel.

The herbar collection of the Tübinger Atlas of the Near and Middle East (TAVO, 1974-1989) consists of 35 000 seed plant specimens from expeditions to countries in the Near and Middle East. The DFG priority programme TAVO was located at and coordinated by the University of Tübingen.

More than 520 exsicates from the time period between 1790-1880 belong to our herbarium, among them are the Rabenhorst collection, 160 fungi exsicates of J. Kunze (1875) and 50 fungi exsicates of Gustav Heppell (1880).

Our herbarium holds some of the oldest and largest special collections of seeds and spices, among them the Joseph Gaertner collection (1732-1791), the Karl Hummel collection (1902-1987) and recent collections by Klaus Dobat. More than 2000 digital images of the Karl Hummel collection can be accessed via the academic library website of Tuebingen University (Pharmakognostische Sammlung Hummel).

You are welcome to visit our collection of teaching resources, among them models of flowers, seeds, roots, fungi and thin-sections as well as cross-sections of tree species.