THE NYÁRÁDY ERAZMUS GYULA’S HERBARIUM IN THE DEBRECEN UNIVERSITY’S PLANT COLLECTION

Katalin BARTÓK 1*, Attila TAKÁCS 2
1 Department of Taxonomy and Ecology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania
2 Department of Botany, Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Debrecen, Hungary

After the publication of the book entitled “Recollection of Gyula E. Nyárády” (2016), the interest of his inheritance increased significantly. His left behind herbarium was estimated to have 55,000 sheets (1988), while till 2016 its number increased up to 85,000. The herbarial investigations are taking place over the Romania’s borders too, such as in the plant collection of the Debrecen University. With this occasion, we have studied the part collections of Rezső Soó (40,000 specimens), the Zoltán Siroki’s (20,000 specimens), together with the kryptogame (3,000 bryophytes) ones. In the Debrecen University plant collection we found 166 plant species collected and determined by E. Gy. Nyárády, among them 154 are superior plant and 12 are moss. In the Soó collection 112 plants arose from E. Gy. Nyárády, 69% of them are from Slovakia, 29% from Romania and 1% from Poland. The Slovakian collections took place in the 1905-1916 period, the most of them (34 species) are from 1910, being collected in Késmárk and Tatra’s region, where E. Gy. Nyárády was secondary school teacher. The Romanian collections took place in the 1905-1942 period, the 33 species mainly arise from the high mountains (especially Rodna Mountains), as well as from the Transylvanian Plain. We have found three endemic species among them: Festuca carpathica Dietr., Koeleria transsilvanica Schur (syn. Koeleria macracantha ssp. transsilvanica (Schur) A. Nyár., and Thymus pulcherrimus Schur. In the Siroki collection there are 42 plant sheets, originated from Slovakia, from 1908-1913 period. The four Romanian plants came from the Rodna Mountains. The Kryptogam Herbarium contains 12 Romanian moss species, collected between 1925 and 1929, most of them being from Székelyudvarhely (Odorheiu Secuiesc). The genus Carex occurs most frequently in the Nyárády-collection, due to his increased interest to sedges, forming 39% of the studied species. In accordance with the labels, in his collecting trips he was occasionally accompanied by Béla Husz (1911, Szepes) and Ádám Boros (1929, Korond).

DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2478/abmj-2018-0008