Making Herbarium (Drying plants)

Herbarium is a term first used by Turnefor (1700) for medicinal plants that are dried as collections. The term herbarium is the preservation of plant specimens in various ways for the benefit of collection and science.

The collection of herbarium specimens is usually stored in a place that is given special treatment which is also known as a herbarium laboratory.

Luca Ghini (1490-1550) a Professor of Botany at the University of Bologna, Italy was the first to dry plants under pressure and attach them to paper and record them as a scientific collection.

Definition of Herbarium

A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.

Herbarium Type

There are two types of herbarium, namely dry herbarium (leaves, roots, flowers, stems), and wet herbarium (fruits). Dried herbarium is plant material that has been preserved by drying or also called dried herbarium specimens.

These specimens are useful as supporting materials for studying biology. herbarium/wet preservation is a plant specimen that has been preserved and stored in a solution.

Basically all types of plants can be made into herbariums regardless of what organs from the plant parts that will be preserved as well as How to Overcome Melon Smallpox.

A good herbarium should provide researchers with the best information about the plant. In other words, a plant collection must contain all parts of the plant and there must be information that provides all the information that is not visible in the herbarium specimen. This means that the plants to be in the herbarium must be good, fertile and not damaged. Good from leaves, stems, roots, flowers etc.

For better results

Be careful when drying or curing so as not to hinder or fail for this activity. It could be that there is insufficient storage space so that there are parts of the preserved plant that do not look perfect (roll up). So the leaves of the plant must be open when pressing. Many plant parts are difficult to preserve because for maximum results it takes a long time.

How to make dried herbarium

A week ago, my child who was in grade 4 got an assignment from his teacher to make dry herbarium. What is certain is that I am very unfamiliar with this term because I am not a teacher of this lesson. I searched for information about Herbarium on google and youtube.

What I had to do to create a Herbarium:

1. Prepare flowers or plants that you want to make Herbarium. The plants I chose :

• Rose

• Nail leaves

• Eagle flower

• Mustard greens

• Ylang flower

2. The plants above I put on top of old newspapers or it could be in a thick open. Place it neatly. Then cover or press the plant using something thick on top. I did this pressing for 5 days at room temperature and in the sun.

The drying or preservation of plants that I do is natural and does not use alcohol. Drying is successful when the flower has hardened when held.

3. Then I paste the dried flowers on the cardboard which I shaped into a photo frame. I made 2 photo frames out of cardboard.

4. Next I give a name to each plant from the type of leaf, name of flower, type of stalk, type of root. I also wrote the name of the flower in scientific language. The last step, I wrapped this herbanium frame in plastic to make it neater.

And my son was very happy with Herbarium he got a bottle of water as a gift from his teacher because the Herbarium was the best. And some of his friends too. Everything is cool, nice and creative.

This herbarium can be used as a wall decoration and remains beautiful for a long time. If, you are interested in making decorations from dried flowers or Herbarium. Please follow my method or you can search on youtube how to make a Herbarium. may be useful.