• Español
  1. Home
  2. University Life
  3. [...]
  4. Complutense Collections
  5. Faculty of Biological Sciences Herbarium MACB

Faculty of Biological Sciences Herbarium MACB

Faculty

Departament

Responsible

Telephone

E-mail

Biological Sciences

Plant Biologyl I

Nieves Marcos Samaniego

+34 91394 4781

herbbioveg1@bio.ucm.es

Description of Funds

The MACB Herbarium of the Department of Plant Biology I, Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid includes around 103.000 sheets which represent the flora of Iberian Peninsula, Balearic Islands and North Africa area. 75 per cent of this collection corresponds to vascular plants. It also includes some interesting collections of lichens and bryophytes.

Funds are classified by taxonomic groups: algae, fungi, lichens, bryophytes and vascular plants. The vascular plants group is, at the same time, divided into pteridophytes, gymnosperms and angiosperms and each group by family and genera in alphabetical order.

The General Collection keeps the nomenclatural types in separate boxes. The number of types kept at MACB Herbarium exceeds 82 specimens.

The History of the Collection

Botanic had been taught since the mid-eighteenth century at the Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid. In 1857, the Royal Botanic Garden changed the ownership from the Faculty of Science of the University of Madrid to the National Museum of Natural Sciences. The results of the teaching and research activity carried out by professors of the Faculty of Science still remain at the Royal Garden.

It wasn’t until 1960 that Botany started to be taught in the classrooms at Ciudad Universitaria Campus. The origin of the herbarium began in 1968 with the arrival of Dr. Bellot Francisco Rodríguez who held the chair of phytography in the Central University,  it was created  in order to meet the needs of  own  resources in botanical research.

Since the late 1970s, the people responsible for the conservation and management of the herbarium have been María Andrea Carrasco de Salazar, until her retirement in September 2004, Santiago Pajarón Sotomayor, until March 2006, and since then Nieves Marcos Samaniego.