Frederic Trèmols i Borrell Collection

Frederic Trèmols i Borrell (Cadaqués, 1831 – Barcelona, 1900) was a botanist and professor of inorganic chemical pharmacy. He was a prominent member of the modern Catalan school of botany and influenced his student Carlos Pau with whom he exchanged letters on determination and classification of plant species. He also stands out for his studies in the genus Hieracium in Catalonia under the guidance of Antoni Cebrià Costa Cuixart, Ramon Masferrer and Manuel Compañó. Together with Costa, he studied the phylloxera and its effects, and in 1879 he travelled to the United States to learn more about American grapevines and study the possibility of replacing the peninsular grapevines affected by this pest.

He was also one of the founders and main curators of the Societat Botànica Barcelonesa and, through Société Helvétique pour l’Échange des Plantes and together with botanists such as Rodríguez Femenias, Estanislau Vayreda and the Count of Torrepando, he proposed the formation of an herbarium dedicated to the study of the Iberian flora. The Trèmols herbarium includes 12,944 specimens mostly collected in Catalonia and it is kept at the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB).

In 1908 the herbarium and the archive were donated by Trèmols widow to the Reial Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (RACAB). During the 1930s the herbarium was revised and modified, mostly by Antoni Marcos (1900–?), who worked under the supervision of Pius Font i Quer and Antoni de Bolòs. Both the herbarium and the archive were donated to the IBB by the RACAB in 1925, along with other historical herbaria. The archive can be consulted in the Catalogue of the CSIC Library and Archives Network.

 

Content of the collection
  • The archive includes a box with documents dated between 1866 and 1905, still in the organizing phase.

It should be highlighted that the Trèmols herbarium catalogue is arranged in cards and sheets with a list of families, species and subspecies of plants grouped in volumes that correspond to the original herbarium volumes.