About

NGBB Herbarium was established in 2004 in a small two-room building next to the office building in order to document and record the plants grown at Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanik Bahçesi. In March 2010, it was registered at Index Herbariorum and received the "NGBB" code. In the following years, the scope of the herbarium expanded with the addition of specimens collected during our research expeditions to improve our collections.
In 2009, Dr. Füsun Ertuğ contributed to the development of the collection by donating approximately 1500 ethnobotanical specimens belonging to the Bodrum Beneficial Plants Research Herbarium. In 2014, Edinburgh Royal Botanik Bahçesi Herbarium presented to our herbarium a distinguished collection of specimens collected from Turkey by P. H. Davis, the author of "Flora of Turkey".
Since 2012, the NGBB Herbarium has become a central hub for researchers and scientific botanical illustrators taking part in the Illustrated Flora of Turkey Project.

In 2015, our Lichen Collection was included in the herbarium by adding 93 lichen specimens growing on tree barks, soil, rocks, decayed plant remains and woods found at 49 spots on the eight islands that make up the Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanik Bahçesi, which were collected and identified by Volker John.
As the NGBB Herbarium gradually grew and its scope expanded over time, the amount of incoming plant specimens increased rapidly. The herbarium was getting tight. In response, in 2015, we built a new herbarium building in the area where the old conservatory was located on the Central Island. We have provided suitable conditions for the dried plant specimens to be preserved in a healthier environment. Our herbarium, which we have equipped with a special ventilation system, now performs its mission and functions better.
In 2020, in addition to dried plant specimens, the Carpology Collection, which includes various plant parts, mainly fruit and seed specimens, and the Anatomy Collection, which includes plant specimens preserved in solutions in glass jars were incorporated into our herbarium, thus our collections took their present form.
There are approximately 16,000 plant specimens in the NGBB Herbarium. Plant specimens in herbarium cabinets are grouped into ferns, gymnosperms, angiosperms; families within each group, genera within the family, species within the genus and subspecies taxonomic levels are arranged in alphabetical order. Lists showing cabinet and shelf numbers of specimens by families and genera are hung on the herbarium cabinets. There is also a user guide at the entrance of the herbarium to help researchers to navigate the collections.
Herbaria are valued not only by the number of specimens they contain, but also by the type specimens they have. The first herbarium specimen or specimens on which the properties of a newly discovered plant species were investigated are called “type specimens” and are scientifically valuable comparative materials.
According to our records, the number of type specimens preserved in NGBB is 134. Click here to access the list of registered type specimens in the NGBB Herbarium.

As NGBB Herbarium, we started to establish a virtual herbarium in 2020, within the scope of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (2011 – 2020) Objective I: “Plant diversity is well understood, documented and recognized”. As of 2022, our virtual herbarium has been put to service by transferring the data and images of the herbarium specimens in the NGBB Herbarium to the web environment.