Meise Botanic Garden (MBG) celebrated its 225th anniversary in 2022. At the start in 1797 it was small teaching garden located in the center of Brussels (Belgium), displaying a small collection of native and exotic plants. From then on the Garden kept expanding and became a scientific institution with a large living collection and herbarium. In 1938 it was moved to its actual location just outside Brussels in the community of Meise (Flanders).
The herbarium of MBG (BR) holds 4 million collection items and in this poster we focus the myxomycete collections that count over 35.000 specimens, from all over the world, including more than 300 type specimens, making this one of the bigger myxomycetes collections worldwide. In this poster we provide “dry” numbers like the oldest specimens are dated 1825, along with some “fun facts”, such as: these oldest specimens are part of the J. d’Udekem herbarium who was family of Belgium’s current Queen Mathilde.
Although the specimens are kept with great care by our herbarium staff, they are showing signs of degradation. It is crucial that specimens are preserved and protected from further deterioration, and still keep their morphological data accessible for study, we therefor have started to re-examine the most valuable specimens (e.g. types, rare species, historically important specimens, etc.) and make a complete documentation of each that will be made available in PDF format for all on the MYXO-BE website managed by MBG. In addition, a sample will be preserved of every examined specimen for molecular analysis.
References

MYXO-BE [Internet]. 2020-2023. Myxomycetes website, Meise Botanic Garden. Available from: https://sites.google.com/plantentuinmeise.be/myxo-be