Since 1855 the herbarium collection has been housed in five different places, and its botanical library in six.
Gil leaves a great legacy of papers, a herbarium specialized in wood-decaying fungi and a group of students and collaborators to carry on.
Here, he oversaw the local natural science museum, its herbarium and also worked on the museum's entomological collections.
The herbarium grows at an average rate of 16,000 specimens per year.
I visited the living collections, the herbarium collections and the library collections and saw evidence of the extensive scientific and educational programmes undertaken there.
The only significant amount of exchange appears to be in herbarium specimens of pressed plants.
No special treatment of the seeds is required prior to the application of this combination of techniques, and good results can be obtained from living, preserved or herbarium material.
The new herbarium's facilities are being finished.
