A xylarium, a teak museum and a bambusetum: the living collections at the Peechi forest institute

Background

Kerala's Information and Public Relations Department has carried a notice of Project Fellow vacancies at the Kerala Forest Research Institute at Peechi, and the institute keeps a set of reference collections that are its most quoted feature. Its collections include a herbarium, a xylarium, an insect repository and a soil museum. It also maintains an arboretum, a bambusetum, an orchidarium, a cane and palmetum, a butterfly garden and a medicinal plants collection. There is a Teak Museum and a Wildlife Museum on the campus. Among its monitoring facilities is a Centre for DNA barcoding and Timber Forensics. It runs sub-centres at Nilambur and at Kuzhur, along with weather stations and permanent plots for long-term monitoring. A xylarium is a reference collection of wood samples, and a bambusetum is a living collection of bamboo species.