Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle
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| Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle | |
|---|---|
| |
| Type | Natural history museum and herbarium |
| Website | mnhn.fr |
| Founded | 1793 |
| Base | Paris, France |
| Scope | International |
| Focus | Natural history research, collections and teaching |
| Other sites | Herbarium catalogue |
The Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle (MNHN) is a French public institution for research, collections and teaching in the natural sciences, with its seat in Paris.[1] Its vascular-plant herbarium, registered in Index Herbariorum under the code P, holds about six million specimens.[2][3] One of them is the holotype of Cannabis indica, the name Jean-Baptiste Lamarck published in 1785. The sheet is annotated as hemp brought back from India by Pierre Sonnerat.[4]
Status and origins
The museum is a public establishment of a scientific, cultural and professional character, constituted as a grand établissement and placed under the joint supervision of the ministers responsible for higher education and research and for the environment.[1] Decree 2023-1321, which created the regulatory part of the Code de la recherche from 1 January 2024, repealed decree 2001-916 of 3 October 2001 on the museum.[5]
The museum was founded in 1793 and took over from the Jardin royal des plantes médicinales, the royal garden of medicinal plants.[1] Sources differ on the garden's date. The French evaluation agency Hcéres dates it to an edict of 1626, and the Ministry of Ecological Transition to 1626 under Louis XIII. Le Bras and colleagues, describing the herbarium's dataset in 2017, give 1635.[1][6][3]
The Herbier national
The herbarium was organised in its modern form between 1793 and 1802. Together with the collection of non-vascular plants (code PC), the vascular-plant collection forms France's National Herbarium, with about eight million specimens in all. The vascular-plant collection alone holds about six million, including an estimated 200,000 type specimens and the historical herbaria of Jussieu and Lamarck.[3] Lamarck's herbarium was sold soon after his death and bought back by the museum in 1886.[7]
By 1935 the collections held more than four million specimens and were spread over four buildings. A donation from the Rockefeller Foundation helped to pay for the present herbarium building on the rue Buffon. The Encyclopædia Universalis dates its construction from 1931 and its opening to 1935–36.[3][8] Between 2008 and 2013 the building and the collection were renovated together, doubling the storage capacity, and more than five million specimens were digitised.[3]
Cannabis specimens
GBIF lists 314 preserved specimens of Cannabis from the herbarium. It files 110 under France, 26 under China, 21 under India, nine under Laos and eight each under Algeria and Vietnam. Most are named Cannabis sativa. The others include seven named Cannabis indica, four Cannabis chinensis Delile and one each Cannabis gigantea Crevost and Cannabis ruderalis.[9]
The Cannabis indica holotype
Lamarck described Cannabis indica in the Encyclopédie méthodique in 1785. McPartland and Small (2020) cite its holotype as an undated sheet in the Paris herbarium, from India and probably from Pondicherry, annotated Chanvre rapporte de l’Inde par M. Sonnerat ("hemp brought back from India by M. Sonnerat"). They add that most of Sonnerat's specimens at Paris were collected around Pondicherry between 1775 and 1778. In their classification the name is the basionym of Cannabis sativa subsp. indica var. indica, the South Asian domesticate.[4] The museum's catalogue gives the sheet the barcode P00562707 and names Sonnerat as its collector. It files the sheet in the Herbier de Lamarck, among the museum's historical herbaria, and records it as Acquis en Novembre 1886 ("acquired in November 1886").[10][11]
Leaf sampling
Remarks on 24 of the GBIF entries state that a leaf sample was taken in March 2021 for C. J. Grassa of Harvard. One of the sampled sheets is Steinheil s.n., Bône (1834), collected in Algeria.[9][12][13]
Catalogue and images
The herbarium's specimen data are kept in a database named Sonnerat, commissioned in 1993. They can be searched through the museum's collections portal and through GBIF.[3] GBIF publishes the vascular-plant dataset under CC BY 4.0.[14] Image licences are set sheet by sheet. Of the 327 images attached to the Cannabis sheets, 280 are licensed CC BY 4.0 and 47 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The image of the Cannabis indica holotype is among the latter.[9][11]
Accessions
Accessions held at the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle.
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Haut Conseil de l'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur (29 November 2024). Rapport d'évaluation du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle (PDF) (Report). Campagne d'évaluation 2023-2024, vague D (in français). p. 6. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle: Herbier National (P)". Index Herbariorum. New York Botanical Garden. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Le Bras, Gwenaël; Pignal, Marc; Jeanson, Marc L.; et al. (2017). "The French Muséum national d'histoire naturelle vascular plant herbarium collection dataset". Scientific Data. 4 170016. doi:10.1038/sdata.2017.16.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 McPartland, J.M.; Small, E. (2020). "A classification of endangered high-THC cannabis (Cannabis sativa subsp. indica) domesticates and their wild relatives". PhytoKeys. 144: 81–112. doi:10.3897/phytokeys.144.46700.
- ↑ "Sélection du JORF n°0302 du 29 décembre 2023". Le portail de la fonction publique (in français). Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Muséum national d'histoire naturelle : 400 ans de savoirs". Ministère de la Transition écologique (in français). 13 March 2026. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Lamarck's Herbarium". Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829): works and heritage. CNRS, Centre Alexandre Koyré. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ Lamy, Denis. "Herbier du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle". Encyclopædia Universalis (in français). 2. Les lieux de conservation au Muséum. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 "Occurrence search: Cannabis at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle". GBIF. Global Biodiversity Information Facility. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Specimen MNHN-P-P00562707: holotype, Cannabis indica Lam". Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, collections. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 "Occurrence 3464225303: Cannabis indica Lam., P00562707". GBIF. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 731738784: Cannabis sativa L., P06829890". GBIF. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "Occurrence 731718635: Cannabis sativa L., P06886057". GBIF. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Retrieved 4 October 2026.
- ↑ "The vascular plants collection (P) at the Herbarium of the Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN - Paris)". GBIF. Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. doi:10.15468/nc6rxy. Retrieved 4 October 2026.