Plants Under the Microscope: Collection of plant specimens from Department of Plant Biology,University of Szeged, Hungary

Introduction, prologue

"In the 100-year history of the Department of Plant Biology at the University of Szeged, plant anatomy and plant organization have played and still play an important role not only in teaching but also in research. Over the past 100 years, a valuable collection of microscopic slides has been collected, which is still of inestimable value for today’s biology students. Based on our experience in education, it is necessary to share the knowledge of plant biology in a scientific educational format, taking into account the objectives of the European Union, in accordance with the efforts of Open Science and Open Access. Using today’s digital technological solutions, we have set ourselves the goal, within the framework of the Mecenatura call for proposals, of making this valuable collection, which even includes an engraving dating from 1954, freely available to everyone. For those who are interested, the book has been prepared with the most important and spectacular sections of plants that the reader may be familiar with, but whose internal structure they may not yet know. The illustrations in the book have been produced with the help of students, and an online database is being developed to present additional sections from the Department’s collection. We believe that this publication can play an important role in stimulating public interest in plants and in helping people to develop their living conditions in a sustainable way by getting to know nature and putting biodiversity first. We hope that this publication will inspire many more people to take an interest in plants in the future."