The Botanical Museum

VISITING HOURS 
The Museum is situated on the groundfloor of the Botanical Institute, in the Alexandru Borza Botanical Garden.
Programme: Tuesday and Thursday, between 10:00-13:00.

The Botanical Museum has been functioning as an academic collection since 1919, after the inauguration of the Romanian University in Cluj. It continues and develops a part of the collections belonging to the Transylvanian Museum, which was founded starting with 1859.    It is located on the groundfloor of the Botanical Institute of the Al. Borza Botanical Garden. The building was put to use in 1953, being located in the vicinity of the main entrance to the Botanical Garden.

Among its 6910 displays the Botanical Museum offers its visitors the chance to enrich their knowledge on the richness, evolution and importance of the vegetal world.

The Museum material display is done in accordance with the systematic, ecologic and economic criteria. The material is preserved through dry methods (by pressing) or is kept in its three-dimensional shape, through wet metods (in various preserving liquids) or as moulds.

The Botanical Museum is organized in two main sections:

I. The plants with economic value section;

II. The systematic arranged plants section.

The plants with economic value section

It comprises several groups:

• the fruit and vegetables collection - preserves traditional varieties and species;
• the cereals collection – various cultivated species;
• the mushroom collection – exhibits various cap mushroom moulds and also a few types of  pathogenic mushrooms, displayed according to the type of disease they cause. They are accompanied by the type of  pesticide that eradicates them;
• the edible fruit and seeds collection and also of oily and sugary products obtained from plants;
• spices and aromatic plants collection:  laurel leaves, mustard seeds, pepper, coriander, tea, etc.
• raw matter for producing heat and light collection is represented by: wood coal, peat, different types of processed coal;
• medicinal plants collection – displays a part of the species included in the Romanian Pharmacopoeia (species scientifically acknowledged for their medicinal qualities). Vegetal organs containing active factors, and which are used in treating certain diseases are displayed here. Furthermore there are two old wives’ tale cure collections exhibited.
• the textile plants collection – includes a series of plants that are used for obtaining textile fibres: besides the well-known flax, hemp or cotton the exhibition also offers textile fibres obtained from plants like Agave, Aloe, fibre palm trees such as: Borassus flabellifer, Attalea funifera, Cocos nucifera. The collection also includes Romanian and foreign products that are used in the household activities and are made from raw vegetal materials.
• the dendrological collection – it contains around 450 samples and sections through both indigenous wood pulp (yew, fir-tree, maple, juniper, cherry tree, smoke tree, nut tree, larch tree, etc) and exotic ones (coconut tree, eucalyptus, ebony, carob, cedar, camphor tree, etc) It is one of the richest and most valuable collections in the country
• One can also admire here: manufactured goods made in the households of  Moţilor Country (wooden pails, two-handled tubs, alpenhorns, etc), a typical house for the Câmpulung-Moldovenesc area (that presents the multiple use of wood), other goods obtained from tree processing: paper made from the leaves of the Borassus flabellifer palm tree, rubber from Hevea brasiliensis  and others.
• ligneous and grassy plant seeds collection, both indigenous and exotic ends this section of plants with economic value.

II. The systematic arranged plants section.

In this section species are introduced in philogenetic order, suggesting the evolution of the vegetal order, starting from bacteria and algae, continuing with mushrooms, lichen, moss, ferns and gymnosperms and ending with the most evolved vegetal species, the angiosperms.

CURIOSITIES AND RARITIES

Welwitschia mirabilis is an ancient, rare and interesting gymnosperm, growing in the Namib desert in south-west Africa, as a remainder of the flora that existed 100 million years ago. Due to the fact that the Welwitschia number has considerably decreased, it is a protected species.
The trunk carries only 2 leaves during the entire life of the plant. The leaves can grow up to a few metres and they are torn by the strong winds blowing in the area. In the upper part of the trunk are the male flowers for the male plant and the female flowers for the female plant, the plant being dioecious unisexuate.
The visitors' attention is also drawn to the palm trees seeds collection which comprises around 180 species, among which we mention the “champion” seed in the world of seeds, that of the Lodoicea seychellarum palm tree, that weighs 16 kg.
Two windows display anomalous plant growing, trunk, branches, flowers or fruit malformations (the so-called teratological cases) caused by the attack of virus, fungi, insects or even plants.

SPECIAL PROGRAMME AND EXHIBITIONS

Students in the Faculty of Biology and Geology are offered a course in the preparation of the vegetal matter, which will enable them to acquire the necessary theoretical and practical knowledge in the preparation and preservation of the items displayed in the Botanical Museum and the Botanical Garden Herbarium.