to the Plant Identification Index
to the Schoolyard Habitat Index

What is an Herbarium?

Herbarium - A collection of dried specimens of plants with date (information) attached, often mounted on linen paper, preserved for study or comparison.

 

here to learn more about some more famous herbaria. here to learn how to prepare your own specimens!

Note: Links to external sites are written out because this site is designed to be used in classrooms NOT hooked to the internet.

If you happened to have, like Harvard University has, more than one herbarium you would refer to your herbaria. While herbarium collections of all sizes exist today, there are fewer than 75 herbaria worldwide with more than one million specimens.

The Harvard University Herbaria are among some several thousand collections of pressed, dried plant specimens worldwide that are used by researchers to further our understanding of the plant world.

I have used (with some adaptation for elementary school students) a great deal of their text from their website when crafting this page. http://herbaria.harvard.edu/Collections/whatis.html

 

Why are there Herbaria?

There was a problem.

During the days of exploration in Europe, when knowledge of the earth's flora (plants) was growing at such a rapid pace that botanical gardens could no longer keep living examples of every known species it became obvious something had to be done! First, the botanical garden would run out of room. Secondly, as explorers went further away from Europe they were collecting plants that needed very different growing conditions from those found in the major gardens.

---

The solution was the herbarium.

 

Herbarium collections have been built up over the years by the efforts of numerous botanists and plant collectors. They have searched from remote and isolated jungles to inner city wastelots and railroad tracks. They wanted to document the diversity and distribution of the earth's flora.

Representatives of most known species of plants can be found in herbaria today, carefully mounted on sheets of archival quality paper, labeled with important information about them, and stored on shelves in cabinets.

In essence, a herbarium is like a library of carefully preserved plants. The specimens themselves and the labels associated with them provide a wealth of information once they have been "read" and studied by scientists.

A specimen and its label are equally important. The care with which the specimen is collected and pressed gives essential clues to its morphology (the study of the shape, form, structure); the extent to which the label documents and describes features of the plant and its habitat, the exact collection locality, the name of the collector and date of collection, and the correct identification, ultimately determines a specimen's scientific value.

The herbarium houses the documentation of the world's flora; the specimens are the key to understanding plant

• relationships,
• geographic distributions,
• economic usefulness,
• even their molecular makeup.

As we lose natural habitats the world over, herbaria increasingly serve as a record of the recent history of plant life, and as a repository of precious genetic information.

 

Herbaria hold the tools for our understanding of the plant world.

Study pointers:

• here to read about a project in Egypt where botanists are racing to preserve plants that will soon be flooded forever!
• here to learn more about some more famous herbaria in New England and around the world.
  • Pages about John Clayton who collected the plants of Virginia before our Revolution!
• here to learn how to prepare your own specimens!

to Schoolyard Habitat Index to Waddell School Introduction Page to What's New! at the school

This site designed and maintained by Emma Craib
who welcomes your
comments and suggestions !
E-MAIL