Founded in 1931 and begun in 1945 by Prof. E. Schmidt at the Reich Institute for Foreign and Colonial Forestry in Reinbek near Hamburg. The collection has grown to over 35,000 samples of wood approximately 11,300 species. The collection shows the taxonomy and structures of timber fibers and is the basis of databases for computer-assisted identification of wood species. Now under the curation of Dr. G. Koch since 2004, the collection is used for species regulations at Thünen Centre of Competence on the Origin of Timber.
See more information about the collection: Thünen Institute