Article

The roots of plant taxonomy are very much connected with the Mediterranean. As a result, this area of c. 2.090.000 km2 houses 229 herbaria registered in Index Herbariorum and a total of c. 27.000.000 specimens involving 21 countries. The size of the collections varies substantially but the majority fall under the “magic” number of 74.000 specimens, the number suggested to be adequately curated by 1 full-time staff. Some of these small Mediterranean herbaria house material of particular Mediterranean collector(s) and are historical in nature; at the other end of the spectrum, other herbaria have expanded their scope, even to faraway ex-colonies, and are very active. A project on the historical collection of Moritz Willkomm “Herbarium mediterraneum pyrenaicum et canariense” housed at COI, involving databasing, imaging, restoration and typification, was the stimulus for the exercise of extrapolating from this study case to the vast collections in the Mediterranean in financial terms and time-scales. Calculations are on the basis of 4.082 € per specimen and 10.96 specimens dealt with by 1 person per day. The exercise is meant to be thought provoking. Some data refer to Turkey in particular.