Not much is known about the beginning of TAU. Our knowledge is mainly based on narrative snippets from former members of the Laboratory of Systematic Botany and Phytogeography. However, part of the TAU’s story is also told by its specimens. It seems that it all began in the late ‘30s by Dimitrios Zaganiaris, who was that time Associate Professor of Systematic Botany and Phytogeography at the Laboratory of Botany in University of Thessaloniki. Dimitrios Zaganiaris was a keen and tireless collector and besides his own extensive collections, he also enriched the Herbarium, by exchanging his duplicata with specimens of other Herbaria. After his death Konstantinos Ganiatsas, also Associate Professor of Systematic Botany and Phytogeography, was to play a decisive role in TAU’s history. During World War II, the Herbarium was hosted in the building of the Faculty of Philosophy. After the fall of Thessaloniki, this very building was used by the occupation troops as a military hospital and the soldiers, possibly ignoring the scientific value of the specimens, used them as tinder and burned them away. Ganiatsas, along with Konstantinos Gratsios, principal of the 3rd female-only high school, risked their lives smuggling the specimens and keeping them in the school’s basement, until the end of the war. However, an accurate assessment of this disaster is impossible, since the exact number of specimens deposited in the Herbarium, at that time, is unknown.
During the ‘60s, the Herbarium was transferred to the building of the Faculty of Sciences, wherefrom it was transferred again to its present location, the building of the School of Biology, during the late ‘80s.
English (UK) 
Ελληνικά