The Pollen Reference Collection of LPP – UNIMORE

The Pollen Reference Collection of the Laboratory of Palynology and Palaeobotany (LPP) of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia is titled to Daria Bertolani Marchetti who carried out to Modena the first slides in 1989. The Reference Collection is organized in the following sections: 1) Envelopes, with pollen from plant material collected in the field or from herbarium sheets, are 3098, and refer to about 1100 different species. 2) Microtubes, contain acetolysed pollen preserved in glycerol jelly, and are about 1440. 3) Slides are mounted with acetolysed and fresh pollen. Therefore, the pollen collection can be used for paleopalynology and actuopalynology. The slides, put into boxes slide rack, are classified according to the morphological criterion (NPC = Number - Position - Character of the apertures - Erdtman, 1969). Their number is about 2000. In the Reference Collection there are three sections: Reference Collection, containing the reference material, described above; Research Collection, relating to materials and sites studied in the laboratory (ca. 22,000 slides); Educational Collection, containing two types of reference slides: slides with the pollen of a single species and “mixed slides” with more species with the same aperture type, number and position, set up to facilitate the distinction of similar pollen. The Educational Collection includes selected slides with material from research work, e.g. archaeological sites, lake/fluvial sediments, forensic cases, honeys, plant systematics. The use of the collection has been recently improved by a database designated by F. Torri and P. Torri, to search the reference material by taxonomic criteria and/or morphological characteristics. Users can search the database according to a single criterion or a combination of morphological characteristics commonly used to visually identify pollen: aperture, exine ornamentation, size range. Images of the pollen will be associated to relevant species.