Accettato per Ill stampa il 19 Settembre 1992Botanical collections in Florence from their origin to the present day. -The development and importance of the botanical collections in Florence are the merit of two great personages, one political and the other scientist. The first, Pietro Leopoldo of Hapsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1765 to 1790, founded in Florence in 1775 the Imperiale e Reale Museo di Fisica e Storia Naturale, in which all preexisting scientific collections of the Medici's were gathered. However, for almost 70 years the museum's botanical collections were very limited (a few herbaria, wax models of plants, etc.), because of the directors' scarce interest in this field. The botanical collections began to develop in 1842, following the arrival in Florence of Filippo Parlatore, a well known scientist from Palermo, and the institution of the Herbarium Centrale Italicum and the acquisition of important botanical collections, such as the Cesalpino, Micheli and Webb herbaria, by the Museo di Storia Naturale. This museum later became the Museo Botanico, now a section of the University's Museo di Storia Naturale; the quality and importance of the botanical collection have improved, thanks to the addition of materials such as Parlatore, Beccari, Sommier, Martelli, Giraldi, and Silvestri herbaria. Since 1914 a Tropical Herbarium (FT), comprising a prestigious collection of plants prevalently from eastern Africa, has been moved from Rome to Firenze and joined the Botanical Museum.The Florentine botanical collection (FI) are currently extremely rich and diversified. The herbaria (comprising about four million specimens) are the nucleus; the wood collections comprise 6,000 samples, and there are approximately 8,000 samples of plant fossils, 16,000 fruit samples, more than 500 plaster and wax plant models and various more recent collections of seeds, pollens, and various microscopic preparations (including diatoms, pollens, anatomic sections, etc). Finally, there is also an important collection of items (mats, hats, clothing, fans, paper, household goods) made from plant materials from all over the world.