The historical wood collection of the University of Genoa: revision and economic estimation

The natural history collections housed in museums and universities are universally recognized as important resources from both a scientific and a social point of view. Consequently, they are increasingly being given an economic value by public authorities. Unfortunately, the operative criteria for the economic evaluation of natural history collections are still debated and the case studies concerning this issue are still scarce. Here we revised the wood collection of the Botanical Garden of the University of Genoa (Italy), assessing its economic value through the Total Economic Value approach. In particular, the feature of the samples, the botanical, geographical and historical provenance, and the conservation status were taken into account. Currently the collection consists of 583 samples referring to 287 taxa (identified at different taxonomical levels, i.e., genera, species, subspecies or variety), belonging to 74 families, split into 7 sub-collections. The economic value of the collection resulted quite low (being just over € 5,200), primarily due to the generally easy chance of reconstituting wood samples (resulting in a low base value) and their generally poor conservation status.