Look’s around

Indonesia is well-known for its cultural and ethnical diversity. Ethnobotanical Museum is one of the museums that keep the Indonesian traditional wealth. Ethnobotany means the science of plant utilization by the certain ethnic group for daily necessities. Built in 1982, Ethnobotanical Museum has purpose to preserve Indonesian flora and cultures, and to provide information on the subject of ethnobotany.

Ethnobotanical Museum is located on Jl. Ir. H. Juanda No. 24, Bogor, West Java. This museum has the collection of about 2000 ethnobotanical artifacts and various dioramas of plant utilization in serving basic necessity. Various traditional products made of plants from the whole Indonesia are kept inside this museum. The collection included food, clothing and housing materials, traditional medicines, household-wares, transportation utilities, agricultural processing equipments, fishery, musical instruments, rituality utilities, children toys, and traditional cosmetics. The collection is divided in two kinds of preservation, namely wet and dry preservation. The wet preservation is used for fruits sample only.

Ethnobotanical Museum is just one of museums reside in Bogor City. The other museums in Bogor City are Zoology Museum, Museum Tanah (Soil Museum), Museum PETA, and Museum Perjuangan. Ethnobotanical Museum is contiguous with Herbarium Bogoriense building. In this museum we can see the visual display of Indonesian flora utilization, wood fossils collection, and the plants used for traditional medicine like “jamu”. This 1600 m2 building is divided in 5 corridors where we can find various objects made of plants. There are three or four display windows in each corridor, along with information of the used plants.

Unfortunately, this museum is still rarely visited by domestic or foreign tourists due to lack of publication. Now, Ethnobotanical Museum, along with Zoology Museum, is managed by Biological Research Center of LIPI. The two museums are the assets of science products that also related to the tourism. Currently, this museum is designed for further improvement. Museum Nature and Human Activities is planned to be constructed. The museum will occupy the Herbarium Bogoriense building.