Costa herbarium

The Costa herbarium was transferred to the Botanical Institute of Barcelona (IBB) by the Real Acadèmia de Ciències i Arts de Barcelona (RACAB) in 1925. In 1847, Antoni Cebrià Costa i Cuixart (1817-1886), professor at the University of Barcelona was selected as the director of the institution’s Botanical Garden. He is considered the precursor of modern Catalan botany thanks to his work Introducción a la Flora de Cataluña (1864), the first synthesis of Catalan flora ever published.

This herbarium includes voucher specimens that were the base for some of the taxa described by Costa (as Eleusine barcinonensis Costa or Delphinium loscosii Costa) or by other botanists such as Heinrich Moritz Willkomm. Therefore, such materials are essential for a better understand of such fundamental work. Costa, in the second edition of Introducción a la Flora de Cataluña (1877), states: “we have very carefully tried to assemble the herbarium of Catalonia, with all the specimens we have been able to draw together, both common and not that common, in addition to rare plants and those that have allowed us to establish, to our judgment, as new or unknown species, varieties or forms”.

The herbarium includes approximately 15,000 specimens, all collected in Catalonia. Although it was reviewed by Pius Font Quer and Antoni Bolòs, currently it still requires further research and computerization.

 
Online queries
 

Only 11 sheets are computerized and are available at GBIF on the following link (exportation date: November 2019).

  • 11 specimens (0.07%)
  • 7 type specimens
  • 11 specimens with images (0.07%)
  • 9 specimens including geographic coordinates (0.05%)
 
References
  • Bolós, A. (1956). El herbario de A.C. Costa. Collectanea Botanica 5: 159–164. Digital.CSIC
  • Gavioli, L., Ibáñez, N. & Soriano, I. 2016. Type specimens preserved in the Trèmols and Costa herbaria (BC). Anales del Jardín Botánico de Madrid 73(2) : 1–6. 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