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Posters
176
THE HERBARIUM OF ANTOINE BRAS (1803-1883)
Werner GREUTER & Francesco Maria RAIMONDO
Herbarium Mediterraneum Panormitanum; w.greuter@bgbm.org, raimondo@unipa.it
The French physician Antoine Bras, for many years Lord Mayor of Villefranche de Rouergue
(Aveyron), at times member of the Department’s Conseil Général, was also a prominent
amateur botanist. His single major work, of 1877, is the “Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du
Département de l’Aveyron”. He also built a considerable personal herbarium, the trace of
which had been lost. It was recently rediscovered, auctioned in November 2008 in Rodez
(Aveyron), and purchased by the first author, to be donated to Palermo University where it is
kept as a separate unit within the Herbarium Greuter (PAL-Gr). The declared purpose was to
keep the herbarium in public property and make it accessible for research purposes. The
plants are being remounted, the label information is databased and processed for online
presentation, together with high-resolution digital specimen images. Duplicates are available
for exchange with interested parties.
The Bras herbarium is reasonably well preserved, although untidy, with limited insect
damage, rat gnawing, and label foxing, but no mould. Its main portion consists of 84
numbered parcels, arranged according to Grenier & Godron’s “Flore de France”. Moreover
there are 2 bundles of mosses and lichens, 2 of “exotic” plants, 9 of mixed material, and 37
that are not directly associated with Bras. Bras collected not only in Aveyron but in the
surrounding departments, the Pyrenees, Alps, Jura mountains, and Corsica. He received
specimens from over 60 contemporary botanists.
This complete and original 19 th Century herbarium offers excellent opportunities to
reconstruct the world of contemporary French botany. A comparative study of labels and
handwritings is in progress. Unfortunately no corollary archival documents could yet be
traced except a portion of the final manuscript for the “Catalogue”. Help in finding the
accession and field books that must have existed, and Bras’ botanical correspondence, would
be greatly appreciated.
Keywords: Antoine Bras, historical herbarium, French floristics, specimen imaging, label
data
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