Content and organization of the collection
The Grunow collection comprises the following elements:
- five accessions books, which list more than 3200 samples
- instructions on the use of the collection, written by Grunow and enclosed within one of the accessions books
- Grunow's original drawings, grouped by species or variety and arranged according to De Toni's Sylloge Algarum
- Grunow's microscope slides, numbered according to the accessions books
- exsiccata material of named diatoms in envelopes loose within folders; the folders are arranged in alphabetical order of genus and species. This collection includes Grunow's material but also exsiccata material distributed by Rabenhorst, Desmazières and others
- exsiccata material of mixed collections in which no noteworthy or dominant diatoms were specified; these are mostly from distributed sets, e.g. Rabenhorst's
- original samples with numbers corresponding to the accessions books
- full sets of two distributed sets of slides: P.T. Cleve & J.D. Möller (1877–1882) 'Diatoms' and H. Van Heurck (1882–1885) 'Types du Synopsis de Belgique'
- library resources, including a copy of Van Heurck's 'Synopsis des Diatomées de Belgique' in which some plates (of drawings contributed by Grunow) are annotated with the sample/slide number from which Grunow prepared the illustration.
The collections are housed in modern metal cabinets on the refurbished top floor of the Naturhistorisches Museum, with plenty of working space along the window benches.
David Mann, August 2009
