Introduction

The conservation room of the Lyon Botanical Garden’s herbarium occupies a 60m² surface at the first floor of the Observatoire.

We can estimate that the number of specimen we have is about 150 000, they are kept in 844 boxes and 177 packets. Mainly composed of pteridophytes and phanerogams, the collection also contains herbals of mosses, lichens, algae and fungus. These samples have been collected from the 17^th century to nowadays, mainly in the region of Lyon but also in faraway countries such as New Caledonia or French Guyana.

In each herbal, the samples are classified in a very simple way : all the collectings representing the same species are gathered, all the genera of a same family are gathered too and the families are classified following the taxonomical order.