Registry of Biodiversity Institutions, Collections and Databases: Institution

Description

The Herbarium of the Department of Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolution of the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the Complutense University of Madrid (MACB) is entrusted with the mission of caring for and preserving the collections that should serve for the research and study of plants. Despite the fact that botany has been studied at the Faculty of Sciences from its origins, the previous link between its staff and the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid meant that for centuries the teaching and research tasks of the University\’s faculty were carried out in the Botanical Garden, in whose herbarium (MA) all the materials from his collections were included, since the Faculty of Sciences did not have an independent herbarium. At that time the direction of the Royal Botanical Garden fell to the Professor of Botany of the Faculty of Sciences, so there was a direct link between both institutions. With the arrival in 1968 of D. Francisco Bellot to the Phytology Chair, the formation of a herbarium began, responding to the need for the Faculty to have its own funds for botanical research. The collection increased little by little, forming the embryo of the current herbarium. At this stage its acronym was MAC. In 1975, the Faculty separated from the Royal Botanical Garden when the functions of Professor and Director were no longer united, receiving many duplicates from the MA Herbarium. Currently its acronym is MACB (since 1987) according to the Index Herbarium (8th edition) and consists of c. 130,000 specimens.