Plants
The Porvoo Museum natural history collection includes several herbaria. The vast majority of the plant specimens are preserved pressed and attached onto pages.
Porvoo Museum’s natural history collection contains about 50 000 specimens. The collection has been built up over a long period of time and donations are added to it continuously. The oldest parts of the collection are from the 1800s and with the help of samples from different times it is possible to study the changes that happened in nature over time and in different areas. Especially species that have disappeared from nature but are preserved in museum collections are important scientific reference material, which is particularly significant during a time of climate change.
Some of the samples are prepared to be suitable for exhibition use, but the majority of the plants and animals in the collection are conserved using other methods. The material in the natural history collection in Porvoo Museum are scientifically significant and can be used by researchers, officials, and other interested parties.
You can look through the specimens of the collection on the website of the Finnish Biodiversity Info Facility: lafi.fi
Direct link to the Porvoo Museum collection: https://laji.fi/en/observation/list?collectionId=HR.4171
The Porvoo Museum natural history collection includes several herbaria. The vast majority of the plant specimens are preserved pressed and attached onto pages.
Mushrooms and lichen are neither plants nor animals. They aren’t difficult to preserve. They aren’t pressed; instead they are dried.
Within the Porvoo Museum natural history collection, the largest percentage of the specimens are insects. And similarly the largest percentage of the insect collection is butterflies.
The Porvoo Museum collection of Finnish vertebrates contains both taxidermied specimens as well as specimens preserved for science.
The geological collections contain minerals and different types of rock from all around Finland. The specimens from abroad contain both cut and uncut semi-precious stones, as well as fossils.