Herbier Universitaire de la Réunion

The Herbier Universitaire de la Réunion is a scientific collection registered in the international Index Herbariorum as REU herbarium. The Herbier Universitaire de la Réunion consists of more than 20,000 dry specimens, over 1,000 specimens in spirit collection and about 500 specimens in silica gel. It covers over 300 families of vascular plants (spermaphytes and pteridophytes), bryophytes and lichens. The specimens were collected mainly in Réunion but also in Mauritius, Rodrigues, Madagascar and Glorieuses Islands. The Herbier Universitaire de la Réunion has an important historical value. About 300 specimens are over 100 years old. The oldest specimen was collected by Commerson in 1770. The other collections are those of Thérésien Cadet (8,500 specimens), Roger Lavergne (3,000 specimens), Jean Bosser (2,000 specimens) and Francis Friedmann (2,000 specimens). The herbarium is regularly enriched with specimens collected by research teams from Université de la Réunion, specimens exchanged with other herbaria and legs from local and foreign botanists. The collection is partially digitized and managed through a publicly accessible database: https://collections-umr-pvbmt.cirad.fr The database allows specimens search by taxon name, collector, locality and collection date. The database also hosts pictures of the digitized specimens. The Herbier Universitaire de la Réunion is housed at the Plant Protection Platform in Saint-Pierre, Réunion (https://3p.cirad.fr).