Alexandre Salino – Herbarium Curator

1. THE BHCB HERBARIUM: MINAS GERAIS, BRAZIL Alexandre Salino – Herbarium Curator Departamento de Botânica – ICB – Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Caixa Postal 486, 30123-970, Belo Horizonte-MG, Brasil. bhcbufmg@gmail.com, salino@icb.ufmg.br The general collection The BHCB Herbarium contains with about 135.000 specimens from Brazil, most of them from Minas Gerais State (Fig. 1). With a 590 thousand km2 area, approximately, the state corresponds to about 7% of the nation’s territory (just a little larger than France). The BHCB Herbarium was created in 1969, and since than has become the main collection of Minas Gerais, representing a key collection for any botanist who undertakes taxonomic studies in Brazil. The collection is essentially of vascular plants with few bryophytes and lichens. There are about 21.000 pteridophytes and 114.000 flowering plants. The scientific projects developed by the staff in the last 10 years have improved the main collection with representative samples from Southern Brazil. The annual improvement is 8.000 sheets/year in average. The main environments represented in the BHCB collection are the Cerrado formations (savanna, grasslands), Campos Rupestres (rocky grasslands), and forests from Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo and São Paulo states mainly. The type and historical collections The type collection comprises about 500 sheets (see Table 1) mainly from Brazilian taxa, being only five types from other countries of Latin America. Sixty two families and 155 genera are represented in this collection. The types most representative families are shown in Table 2. The Herbarium maintains historical and important type collections of some collectors, as: Schwacke, Glaziou, Markgraf, Gardner, Malme, Lindman, A. Sampaio, Mello Barreto, Mendes Magalhães and Gert Hatschbach. Table 2: Mostrepresentativefamilies ofthetypecollection. Fig. 2: Some images of the BHCB type collection. The project The project intends to database and digitalize the types and historical collections of the BHCB Herbarium. After the scanning of the 500 types, the Herbscan will be very useful in the current projects of the herbarium staff. A new project will be undertaken in the BHCB herbarium, that plans to digitalize images of about 4,000 sheets (800 pteridophytes, 160 Solanaceae, 440 Orchidaceae, 140 Myrtaceae and 2,500 arboreal species from Minas Gerais state - Brazil). These images will be available in the Herbarium website and will become a virtual guide to the state flora. Fig. 3: Dasyphyllum leptacanthum (Gardn.) Cabrera, a Gardner collection. Table 1: Number of typesbycategory. Fig. 4: Microlicia glazioviana Cogn., a Glaziou collection. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fig. 1: Minas Gerais State in Brazil.