The Wooden Library in Alnarp

Xylothek

Wooden libraries – or xylothek, from the Greek words for tree (xylon) and storing place (theke) – flourished for a short period in history, around 1790-1810, mainly in Germany. They were a development of the naturalia cabinets common in the 18th century, and consisted of simple pieces of wood specimens placed in some kind of box or cupboard. In its most sophisticated form, it was shaped like ‘books’, with details from the tree inside and arranged as a "library".

Each ‘book’ describes a specific species and is made of that particular type of wood (the ‘covers’), with the spine covered by a piece of bark and covered with mosses and lichens that grow on the tree described. ‘Books’ of shrubs are covered with moss and split branches both on the cover and on the spine..

Inside there are dried leaves, flowers, fruits, seedlings, a piece of the root, cut branches, seeds - similarly arranged in every "book". In a compartment inside the spine lies a delicately written description of the tree, its biology and its practical use.

The creators

We know the names of four different manufacturers of wooden libraries. Three of them put their works up for sale, often on a subscription basis. The wooden library in Alnarp is an example of that. The collection was made in Nürnberg, Germany during the first decade of the 19th century by Friedrich Alexander von Schlümbach and Johann Goller. Nine different collections of their hands are known from Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Sweden (Alnarp). The Alnarp collection is by far the largest known of these and the only one covering more than 200 different species.

The Alnarp collection

The collection came to Alnarp in 1952 through a donation from gardener Per August Sandgren, who attended one of the first gardening courses at the Alnarp Institute in the early 1880s. He had bought the collection in Germany in the 1920s.