Botanical Garden of Chelyabinsk State University
History of creation
The Botanical Garden of Chelyabinsk State University has been created since 1999. The first director of the Botanical Garden was L.I. Spiridonov.
In September 2000 the Faculty of Ecology established the Plant Ecology Laboratory (the head of the laboratory - V.V.Merker), its main task was to create the Botanical Garden fund collections. Since 2000 the Laboratory of Plant Ecology has started the creation of greenhouse plant collections, small planting of woody plants were made in the open ground field in the territory of academic building №1 in 2002-2003. In 2001-2002 laboratory staff drafted the project catalogue of tree plants (manuscript) for the purposeful formation of plant collections of Europe, the Urals, Siberia and the Far East of Russia in the Botanical Garden. Besides working on the establishment of living collections, since 2000 the staff of the Plant Ecology Laboratory (the head of laboratory and two laboratory assistants) was involved in the formation of the Herbarium, the accumulation of exposition material for scientific collections - a botanical museum and botanical library. Electronic data base has been set up for every area.
In 2004 the Botanical Garden was put under control of A.V.Melnikov, the Pro-rector for Research. The open ground plant collection actually started to form in 2005 when the most significant planting was made. In June 2005 L.I.Spiridonov left CSU. In 2005 the first "CSU Botanical Garden catalogue of tropical and subtropical plants collection" was released, the plants cultivated in the adapted facility of the Faculty of Ecology (the academic building №5). Currently, the collection of greenhouse plants still can be found in the facility of the Faculty of Ecology, plants are placed on the shelves under artificial light. Since 2005 the seed fund has been created which is constantly updated.
Since February 2006 V.V.Merker became the director of the Botanical Garden. In July 2006 the University Scientific Council approved the Disposition on the Botanical Garden, according to which the Botanical Garden was an independent scientific and educational structural subdivision of Chelyabinsk State University. April 8, 2006 the CSU Botanical Garden joined the Council of Botanical Gardens of the Urals and the Volga region. In September 2006 the Herbarium of the Botanical Garden has received international acronym Index Herbariorum CSUH (Herbarium, Botanic Garden, Chelyabinsk State University).
In 2008 the first delectus was released, in 2010 - the second one. According to the International Agreement on the Exchange DELECTUS SEMINUM plant seeds the exchange of delectuses and samples seeds with botanical gardens and other botanical institutions is holding. The Botanical Garden of the University of Chelyabinsk while the plant material exchange is in compliance with the Regulations of the Convention on Biological Diversity (Rio-de-Janeiro, 1993) and signs the agreement on the transfer of living plant material. The list of spores and seeds offered in exchange for the CSU Botanical Garden is sent almost at 100 botanical institutions (botanical gardens of universities, arboretums, parks, private collections) all around the world.
