Botanical

The Fitch Laboratory Seed Reference Collection includes over 2100 different species and subspecies of plants commonly found in archaeological sites in Greece. The collection was originally built in 1991-1992 by Patricia Collins in consultation with Professor Glynis Jones (University of Sheffield). Most species were collected as ready-identified specimens from botanical gardens. The seeds are stored in glass vials and labelled with the genus and species (and sub-species or variety where applicable), the unique accession number and the Flora Europaea number. The collection is stored in numerical order according to Flora Europaea (T.G. Tutin et al. 1964-1980, CUP). For the cultivated species, especially for the cereals, there are often many duplicates. The latter have been collected as whole ears, as well as seeds, so that the chaff is available for study. Where possible, there are also the wild progenitors