Natural scientific collections

Botany

Botany collection fund consists of 12,500 plant items. 4% of the number falls on the lichens, 10% on mosses and the largest rate (10,700 items) belongs to vascular plants. The botany collection fund serves the professional and laic public especially for the scientific, educational, and presentation purposes. Its oldest and most precious part is a historical Junker’s herbarium. It was itemized at the end of 19th century by August Junker, a professor at Evangelic grammar school in Banská Bystrica. It includes 929 items of vascular plants, mosses, lichens, cyanophytes, and alga. The particular species are classified into 40 families. In the herbarium there are mostly represented ordinary species of the past in the surrounding of Banská Bystrica, however, in the presence, many of those localities vanished or were definitely changed and these species of plants became precious and threatened. From the scientific point of view, the following archeophytes belong among the most precious ones – in Slovakia, it is extinct Asperuula arvensis, critically threatened tare, threatened chess (Bromus secalinus), sweet abyssum, and vulnerable papulienka poľná.

Field woodruff - is extinct species of vascular plant in the presence in Slovakia, a part of Junker’s herbarium from the end of 19th century (acquisition: 7th July 1882, Banská Bystrica, Calvary hill).

Usneas - critically threatened lichens of the mountainous areas, which are very sensitive for air pollution; their occurrence is more and more rare. (Usnea florida L. in the picture)

Clusius’ gentian - a precious, proprietary high-elevation plant of the limestone mountains off Slovakia ranked, according to the Red list, among the vulnerable species.