The Zurich Succulent Collection is a place of green knowledge. It houses the world's most extensive and important special collection of succulent plants and is a national treasure.
While a large part of the living collection is open to the public, the library and the herbarium are exclusively available to science.
Our plant collections in the greenhouses and the rear areas include around 21,800 individuals from over 4400 species of succulent plants and 79 different plant families. For the public, the succulents are presented according to major regions: South America, North America, Africa and Madagascar. Two greenhouses are dedicated to a special section on epiphytes and woody succulents. The mightiest specimens can be found in the Giant Plant House, such as the nine-metre-high and probably over 100-year-old Cereus hildmannianus cv. 'Monstrosus'. Outside, some of the hardy representatives grow in the rockery and further representatives of the collection are kept in pots in cold frames.
To ensure that you do not lose track of this abundance, various information elements, such as "Grossbücher", information boards, display cases and listening stations, have been set up in the living collection. They provide a lot of interesting facts about the amazing variety of water-storing plants.
It is not only the succulents in the collection that are thriving. Around one linear metre of specialist books and magazines are aquired every year. The specialised library with its reference works, magazines, index cards and catalogues has long since spread into offices and work rooms.
Researchers have access on request:
Phone +41 44 412 12 80
A herbarium (pl. Herbariums; lat. herba = herb, plant) is a collection of pressed, dried, and glued to sheets of paper. The specimens of these plants are usually grouped according to taxonomic aspects (families, genera and species) and filed either according to a specific classification or in alphabetical order.
Botanists have been pressing and drying plants for centuries. This technique is a simple way to permanently preserve plants and plant parts and thus keep them ready for later examinations. Life is not over with preserved receipt. Its data, such as location data, are introduced into public databases. The succulent collection is also active here.
Perhaps you have already created a herbarium, i.e. pressed, dried and mounted plants on thick paper? Pressing and drying is still the standard technique for the long-term storage of plant coverings.
The method was probably invented by medieval herbalists who inserted plant fragments into their herb books as a "thought aid". Succulents can also be prepared and stored in this way, and the herbarium of the succulent collection has been doing this since it was founded in the 1950s. To date, a good 8000 herbarium sheets have been collected – made from cultivated plants in the collection, received by other institutions as gifts or in exchange, or as evidence of research projects.
In addition to dry specimens, our herbarium also includes specimens in alcohol. Such wet specimens (around 7880) use the "rum pot principle" – parts of the plant are pickled in high-proof alcohol and thus preserved.
The dry specimens (around 5600 dried plants) are "mummies", mostly of cacti, which are kept as three-dimensional specimens. In addition, over 7700 seed specimens, mainly of cacti, are also preserved in the herbarium. In total, the herbarium of the Succulent Plant Collection comprises over 29,900 individual specimens and thus represents a veritable treasure trove for research.
The herbarium of the Succulent Plant Collection is not open to the public.
