The project Xeingorri Ikerketa donates 27 sheets with 30 specimens of flora from the Roncal Valley to the University Herbarium.
The specimens were collected by schoolchildren from the Valley in an ethnobotanical workshop.
The Herbarium of the University of Navarra has incorporated 27 sheets with 30 specimens of flora from the Roncal Valley for conservation.
The materials collected are the fruit of an ethnobotanical workshop carried out by the project Xeingorri Ikerketa, promoted by the Chair of language and Basque Culture with funding from the Government of Navarre. The initiative has been carried out by the ethnographer, historian and member of Etniker Navarra Pablo Orduna and the botanist Virginia Pascual, authors of the guide Ethnobotany of the Roncal Valley, with the partnership of Professor Aritz Larraia.
These specimens are in addition to the more than two million specimens of plants and animals housed in the Natural Science Museum of the academic centre, managed by staff from department at Environmental Biology.
The ethnobotanical workshop was proposed as a pilot experience, exportable to other areas and regions, with the goal aim that young people discover their own community cultural landscape and take contact with the material or immaterial, as well as natural and ethnographic heritage of their locality, valley or region of residency program. At the same time, the methodology of work has allowed the contact with printed scientific sources, the building of intergenerational relationships with their elders and the development of different social, linguistic and digital competences.
On the other hand, through the submission of materials to the collection of vascular plants of the University of Navarra, the collaborative work multidisciplinary between ethnography and the study of the environment is encouraged. Similarly, it is committed to the introduction of ethnobotany in the scientific research and the inclusion of the 'traditionalknowledge ' on flora in the university world.
Digital ethnoherbariumThe set of 27 donated sheets is being digitised in the University Herbarium to be published on the internet freely and free of charge through GBIF, the world's leading platform for data biodiversity. For its part, the Chair de language y Cultura Vasca has included the most significant samples of the specimens collected on its website, as well as the various teaching materials and guides produced at framework of the aforementioned project for the creation of a digital ethnoherbarium of the Roncal Valley.