»The dried garden« of Count Jožef Kalasanc Erberg
One of the first terms used for collections of dried plants was hortus siccus or “dried garden”. The first herbariums were generated in the 16th century when this was enabled by progress in the development of paper making. Initially, they appeared in the form of herbarium books, and it was only as late as 18th century that they were made as collections of separate sheets when the word herbarium began to be used. The owners of herbariums were not only botanists but also aristocrats who collected plants mainly for their natural science libraries.
Count Jožef Kalasanc Erberg, lord of the manor from Dol near Ljubljana owned two book-shaped herbariums. From 1794 until his death, he set up a park next to the Dol Manor House, which was a true botanical garden full of exotic trees and flowers. In 1798, he collected plants for the “Dol Herbarium” (Herbarium vivum Lustthalense) in this very garden. The collection is kept in a 47 cm high and 32 cm wide book. Only a single dried plant is pasted on each page, the name of which is written in Latin. Comments in German, of course in the Gothic alphabet, are added. The book has 135 pages and concludes with an alphabetical catalogue of species.
Baron Jožef Kalasanc Erberg (1771-1843) worked in Ljubljana as a member of the Provincial States, and later in Vienna where he tutored the heir to the throne. He was a culture historian, a collector of antiques and works of art, and an amateur naturalist from the circle of Žiga Zois (1747-1819). On his property at Dol near Ljubljana he set up a true botanical garden with over 7,000 plants. In the park pavilion, he exhibited his works of art, ethnological and technological collection, and natural history items (birds, minerals and herbariums).
The Dol Herbarium
In 1798, Count Jožef Kalasanc Erberg created a herbarium book with 130 species from his estate, which he named with Linnaeus’s binominal nomenclature. The curator of the Provincial Museum of Carniola, Count Franz Jožef Hanibal Hohenwart (1771-1844), was his brother-in-law, so it was not unusual that Count Erberg was an ardent supporter of the Museum (founded in 1821), donating a series of objects to it. Among them was the aforementioned herbarium book titled Herbarium vivum Lustthalense or “The Dol Herbarium”. Most of the plants in this herbarium are ornamental, originating largely from America, the Mediterranean, South Africa and Asia. According to the current nomenclature, they are classified into 36 families, with half of all plants belonging to sunflowers, legumes (10 species of the genus Pelargonium) and mallows (6 species of the genus Hibiscus).
The Herbarium with Vases
The Slovenian Museum of Natural History of Slovenia also holds the “Herbarium with Vases”, another herbarium book from the legacy of Baron Erberg. On the first page is Jožef Kalasanc Erberg’s signature, followed by a list of species, which itemizes 100 pages, on which 389 plants are pasted. These are named in the herbarium with their pre-Linnaean names, with German names also added. The plants are decorated with yellow and red vases. Utilization of various vases as ornate elements in herbariums was popular particularly at the end of the 17th and in the first half of the 18th centuries and is most likely appertaining to the fact that plant collections were perceived as dried gardens, where plants (although on paper) were placed in vases (e.g. the Georg Clifford Herbarium and the Zierikzee Herbarium). Nothing is known as to who and when the herbarium was made and how Erberg obtained it. Although the majority of plants in the herbarium flourish in Slovenia, it also contains some ornamental and cultivated species (snapdragons, endives). The plants included in the herbarium now thrive in several areas of our country, although the great majority of the species are characteristic of the Alpine and pre-Alpine regions (e.g. Edelweiss, Alpine Clematis, Alpine Sow-whistle, Alpine Snowbell, Kamnik Orchid, Lady’s-slipper, Bird’s-eye Primrose, Hairy Sedge, Striped Daphne), some species are more thermophilous (e.g. Common Henbit, Butcher’s-broom, Prickly Stonecrop, Hound’s-ear) and some are characteristic of wet habitats (e.g. Bogbean Leaf). Furthermore, the herbarium accommodates some weed species that had been more widespread in Slovenia in the past but are rarer today (e.g. Small Nettle, Cornflower, Common Corn-cockle). In the herbarium, we can also find specimens of a sundew, several species of orchids and some single-celled plants (e.g. liverworts).
Two herbariums in digital form
Have a look at the entire herbarium in digital forms
