of the Russian Academy of Sciences
In 1714 tsar Peter the Great ordered to establish a Pharmaceutical Garden on Vorony Island, St. Petersburg. In 1823 the Garden was reorganized and became the "Imperial Botanical Garden". It was renamed to become the "Peter the Great Imperial Botanical Garden" in 1913. After 1917 it became the Main Botanical Garden of the USSR and was placed under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences in 1930. In 1931 the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR merged into a single organization Ñ the Botanical Institute, now called Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Komarov Botanical Institute is the leading botanical institution in Russia and one of the best known botanical centres in the world. Plant specimens collected in Russia and all continents are collected and preserved at the Institute, a scientific service for the world that started in the 18th century. The Institute's botanical collections are among the three largest collections of this kind in the world and contain the standard specimens of new plant species described by the staff of both the Institute and other botanical institutions.
The Institute's collections contain nearly 7 million herbarium specimens of higher and lower plants and fungi. The Botanical Museum of the Institute has the country's largest collections of seeds, fruits and wood samples, its economic botany collection and palaeobotany collections comprise about 100,000 specimens. Outdoor and indoor collections of the Botanical Garden include over 12000 plant species and varieties which represent nearly all floristic regions of the globe.
The rich collections of the Institute provide the basis for numerous publications such as the multivolume Flora of Russia. Several of these works have been translated into other languages.
The big subtropical greenhouse of the Komarov Botanical Institute.
Komarov Botanical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, http://spbrc.nw.ru/!english/org/bin.htm (accessed 1 October 2004).