General Botany Collection

The collection gathers models of flowers and other anatomical parts of plants of German manufacture dating back to the late 19th to early 20th century, along with the herbarium from 1876.

The origins of a Sardinian botanical tradition trace back to the years of Piedmontese reformism and the refoundation of the two Kingdom Universities (1764-65). One of the earliest records of Sardinian flora is Carlo Allioni's "Fasciculus Stirpium Sardiniae" (based on material from Michele Antonio Plazza, a professor in Cagliari).

In the late 18th century, Gavino Pittalis from Sassari, a professor of medicine at the University of Sassari, composed a "Flora Turritana," unfortunately lost. The most extensive and exhaustive study remains Giuseppe Giacinto Moris's "Flora Sardoa," published in Turin in three volumes with numerous illustrations between 1837 and 1859.

The Botany Collection consists of a set of flower and plant models, microscopes, and other small equipment. Additionally, the herbarium known by the international code SS is preserved. Established in 1876, the herbarium contains about 100,000 exsiccata related to the Sardinian herbarium, with samples from the flora of Sardinia, and the general herbarium, with samples from the European and Mediterranean flora.

Today, the herbarium also houses specimens related to research on flora, vegetation, biodiversity conservation, systematics, and phylogeny, as well as environmental monitoring from the Laboratory of Environmental Botany and Plant Biosystematics of the Department of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

The SS herbarium is divided into three sections:

1. Samples collected from the 1960s to 2000
2. Historical section of the Italian herbarium from 1800-1900
3. Section of the herbarium from 2000 - in progress