INTRODUCTION

HERBARIUM

Herbarium is a collection of dried and mounted plant specimens used in systematic botany. To preserve their form and colour, plants collected in the field are spread flat in sheets of newsprints and dried, usually in a plant press between blotters or absorbent paper. The specimens, mounted on sheets of stiff white paper, are labelled with all essential data, e.g., date, where found, description of the plant, altitude, specials habitat conditions, and placed in a protective case. As the precaution against insect attack the pressed plant is frozen or poisoned and the cases disinfected. Herbariums are essentials for the study and verification of plant classification, the study of the geographic distributions and the standardizing of nomenclature. Thus inclusion of as much of the plant (e.g., flowers, stems, leaves, seeds, and fruit) as possible is desirable. Linnaeus’ herbarium now belongs to the Linnaean society in England. Most universities maintain herbariums. Notable herbariums in the United States include the grey herbarium at Harvard and those at the National Museum (of the Smithsonian Institution) and the New York and Missouri botanical gardens.

 There are four main aspects to making good herbariums specimens:

·         Collecting

·         Pressing preserving

·         Mounting

·         Labelling

                                                                                                                                                     

When collecting plants for herbariums specimens there are two basic points to remember:

·         Include all available parts of the plants(i.e. all reproductive structures such as fruits, flowers ,and buds, as well as bark, leaves, juveline or coppice foliage, etc)

·         Include detailed notes about the plant habitats and it’s surroundings.