XVIII International Botanical Congress (IBC)

The eighteenth International Botanical Congress (IBC) will be held in Melbourne from 23–30 July 2011. The IBC2011 website contains information about the scientific program, field trips and congress venues. Information about the collections of the National Herbarium of Victoria  and Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Library is provided below.

Free public lectures

The International Botanical Congress organising committee is pleased to offer five free public lectures by leading scientists. The lectures will cover a range of topics, from the future of wine-growing to research priorities, plants in children's literature, plant conservation, and how information about Australia's plants and animals is being made available online.

Fruits of the vine – future climates and wine
Professor Snow Barlow will discuss how climate influences wine production and how the global wine industry will respond to climate change.

The world of plants
Professor Peter Raven talks about our reliance on plants for food, clothing, shelter and medicine, and discusses the challenges of conserving plant biodiversity into the future.

Brave New World: can we solve tomorrow's environmental and energy problems by using life itself?
A panel of eminent scientists, with the equally eminent science journalist Robyn Williams as moderator, will discuss and debate the role of plants and microorganisms in this time of great technological advancement, and how they can be harnessed to solve tomorrow's environmental and energy problems.

Sister Water Lily meets the Big Bad Banksia Man
Dr Peter Bernhardt talks about how plants have been incorporated as characters in children's literature, and how botanical illustration in children's literature can help teach the fundamentals of plant biology.

The Atlas of Living Australia: infrastructure for biodiversity research
Donald Hobern talks about the Atlas of Living Australia, a national initiative focused on making Australia's biodiversity information more accessible and useable by bringing together distribution data, photos, identification tools and scientific literature.

For more information about the lectures, see the IBC website.

Collections

The National Herbarium of Victoria (MEL) houses a collection of over 1.2 million specimens. Approximately two thirds of the collection is Australian, and one third was collected overseas. MEL's Australian collection contains historical material dating back to the earliest days of European colonisation, including material from major nineteenth-century exploring expeditions. The contemporary collections cover all regions of Australia, with a particular focus on material collected in the state of Victoria. All flowering plant families are well-represented, and MEL also holds comprehensive fungi, bryophyte, lichen and algae collections.

The majority of MEL's foreign collection derives from the herbarium of Otto Sonder and spans all major plant groups from every reach of the globe. Of particular note are extensive algae collections and important ninenteenth-century collections from South America and southern Africa. Less than 10 per cent of MEL's foreign collection is mounted and databased. As such, some parts of the collection may not be available to researchers.

The Herbarium also houses a comprehensive Library that holds an extensive collection of botanical works published in the nineteenth century and earlier, as well as contemporary publications, original botanical artwork, letters and manuscripts.

Visiting the collections

Access to the Herbarium collection and Library is by appointment only. Bookings for visiting the Herbarium during the IBC have now closed.