January 20, 2022

I don't know what's the educational system of other countries but in Pakistan our teachers mostly concentrate on theory work instead of practical. So till the f.s.c my main concentration is also on theoretical work.

But after f.s.c we need to select the specific field as a career and I choose botany which is all about study of plants. Also our practical study start in university life and we need to complete different types of projects in every semester related to our subject.

As zoologist work on animal, chemist play with chemicals, physicst play with intrusment, technologist rotate their fingers on computer. Like them we all time need to concentrate on plants, study about their life form, their cytology, their flowering and leaves pattern, about their inflorescence and fruit type.

Besides this the main practical work is to submit herbarium three to four times in the whole session of BS.

First semester gone away smoothly, we studied the some basic and easy Subjects. But in second semester we need to study the special branch of botany that's plant taxonomy which all about the scientific classification of plants in which we need to study the different types of plants, roots, stems, leaves, flowers, inflorescence and different fruits types in scientific language.

All other things we studied theoretically, but Sir said you need to make the at least twenty plant herbarium. So that you getting aware with Botany to some how.

Oops what is the herbarium, how we prepared them.....? We listened this term first time. Sir said to make the herbarium:

• First you need to go to the field with scissors and magazine/newspaper.

• Cut the specific part of plant and put in the paper for preservation.

• Then check the plant daily and also change the book, so that fungus didn't attack them.

When your plant is totally dried, then you need to paste it on the herbarium sheets with gum sticks and also with proper tagging.

Sir gave this project in very start of the semester and we need to submit it in the finals. But as we have no practical work experience so we leave it on pending.

But in last week before finally me and my friends go the field and trying to collect the plant. The first plant that's got my attraction is Parthenium because it's herb, looking softy as we have no scissors in our hands so thought that we separate it easily from plants.

But it's my mistake to think the herbarium a softy herb, with the lots of effort its one part getting separated from the plant and also in result causing allergy in my hand. I started weeping that how the hell is my life after taking admission in botany.

That day we only collect this herb from the university and asked my friend remaining all plants we collect from our village. Yeah we did it, but some plants take too much Time to dry. I take advise my senior and she said put one brick or any heavy thing on the book and magazine in which you put plant for preservation.

In this way plants plants dried earlier, but I used extra intelligence and put three bricks on the magazine lol and getting busy in my final exams. After getting free from exams we have two days holidays and then we need to submit the herbarium. And when I removed the bricks and checked my plants me be like that what is this most of the plants are getting broken.

Me start weeping that now what's happened, after weeping I called my friends and telling her about my adventure. She said pack your all things and came in my home. Because she collected the extra plants. Me thanks God.

After reaching her home, she already find the mounting of plants on the herbarium sheets then he started mounting plants on my sheets and I start cutting the tags and put them on sheets.

When plants mounting done, we start searching for the plants name at that time we even are not getting aware with the Moraceae family. However it's take a lot of time in finding the plants name. But at last we finished them.

After completing the herbarium, we finished our practical notebook. Although it was the hell tiring day but we both friends enjoyed a lot when we discovered the any new plant scientific name.

Closing Thoughts:

Although making herbarium for the first time is too much difficult task. It's tired me a lot and also gave a lots of headache. But still it's Increase our knowledge and gave experience. Also I started believing on the fact that nothing in the world is Impossible and difficult and Practice makes man perfect. After this again In our whole session we submitted almost three times herbarium but then again I didn't need to go to the friend home. I did it on my own behalf because from the first experience I learnt how to collect plants, their preservation, naming and mounting.

In the end if you are teacher please also concentrate on practical work related to your subject and play a good role in creating the creative youth.

Thanks For Reading!