Eastern Romania: Oldest herbarium in SE Europe displayed in Iași

The oldest herbarium in Southeast Europe, dating back 290 years, will be exhibited for the first time on August 13 at the "Dumitru I. Grumăzescu" Galleries in the "Regina Maria" Municipal Museum of Iași.

The Baussner Herbarium was compiled in 1734 by Georg Friedrich Baussner, a student at the Königlichen Padagogium in Halle, Germany. He was born around 1719 in Vienna. His father, Simon Baussner Edler von Baussnern (1677-1742), was the son of the superintendent of the Evangelical Church in Transylvania and a priest in Biertan (Sibiu County), while his mother, Anna Maria, originally from Sibiu, was the daughter of Bartolomeu Fabritius.The Baussner family lived in Vienna between 1711 and 1733, before returning to Hermannstadt (Sibiu).

This rare herbarium was brought to Sibiu by a local physician, the father of one of Baussner's friends, after the herbarium’s young creator passed away.

The exhibit was brought to Iași from the Brukenthal National Museum in Sibiu as part of the "Spectacle of Nature" exhibition, according to a press release.

"Alongside items from the collection of minerals, shells, and butterflies, visitors will also have the opportunity to admire the first herbarium from our country's territory. The botanical collection of the Museum of Natural History in Sibiu holds significant value, not only historically (as it includes the oldest herbariums in Romania, dating from the first half of the 18th century) but also in terms of scientific documentation due to the invaluable pieces it contains,” the press release states, cited by Agerpres.

The organizers of the Iași exhibition also note that "the herbarium contains exclusively plants cultivated in gardens and parks, likely collected mostly in Germany. In botanical literature, this herbarium was first mentioned by botanist F. Schur, who discovered it in 1853 among the belongings of the Sibiu botanist Josef Lerchenfeld. Since it comprises almost exclusively cultivated plants, whose collection sites were not specified by the author, this herbarium holds exceptional cultural and historical-documentary value."

(Photo source: Muzeul Municipal „Regina Maria” Iași on Facebook)