Bernades herbarium

The herbarium of Miquel Bernades Mainader (1708-1771) and his son Miquel Bernades i Clarís (1750-1801) was transferred to the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB) by the Real Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (RACAB) in 1925.

Bernades Sr. was doctor of King Charles III (1716-1788), the first botany professor in the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid between 1764 and 1771, and disciple of Josep Quer Martínez (1695-1764). He collected specimens in southern France, Catalonia, Valencia, Mallorca and Castile and wrote an unpublished manuscript entitled Specimen Florae Hispanicae, which included the description of 2,000 taxa, many of them new, more than 120 drawings, vernacular names, uses and locations.

Bernades Jr. inherited the Specimen Florae Hispanicae and promoted its enlargement and improvement. He was a medical doctor at Montpellier University, becoming in 1793, the second Professor at the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid succeeding Antonio Palau Verdera.

The Bernades herbarium comprises 814 sheets grouped into 243 folders, each with a RACAB’s catalogue number. Plants are attached in the front of the sheet with Linnaean descriptions, and beneath are the pre- Linnaean descriptions. Only 134 sheets are dated , 132 of them collected by Bernades Sr. between 1740 and 1770 and only two collected by Bernades Jr. (one in 1766 and the other in 1783). It contains mostly plants from around Madrid and La Cerdanya. Dra. Neus Ibáñez computerized and studied the whole herbarium in her doctoral thesis (2006).

 
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This collection is available at GBIF on the following link (exportation date: November 2019). Although the collection is fully computerized in this portal cannot be found: 6 specimens non determined at the exportation date and 11 specimens that are not vascular plants.

  • 800 specimens (98.28%)
  • 49 specimens with images (0.61%)

 

References
  • Ibáñez. N. 2006. Estudis sobre cinc herbaris històrics de l’Institut Botànic de Barcelona. Doctoral thesis. Universitat de Barcelona. Digital.CSIC
  • Ibáñez, N., Soriano, I. & Montserrat, J. M. 2009. L’herbari Bernades a l’Institut Botànic de Barcelona (BC). Collectanea Botanica 28: 13–48. Digital.CSIC
  • Nualart, N. & Ibáñez, N. 2016. Las colecciones históricas del Herbario BC (Instituto Botánico de Barcelona). Boletín de la Asociación de Herbarios Iberico-Macaronésicos 17 : 10–18. Digital.CSIC