Herbarium

Many people believe that a herbarium will be stocked with living plants, which is not always the case. These plant specimens, on the other hand, are pressed, dried, and pasted to sheets of paper. They are no longer alive. In most cases, the sheets of paper are housed inside cabinets for the sake of security and organisational organisation. Similarly, to a library, an herbarium preserves objects (specimens or books) in a secure and structured environment that allows them to be found and used by researchers. Plant specimens can survive for hundreds of years with minimal evidence of degradation if they are stored appropriately.

Herbarium in brief

Specimens are collected and stored in the herbarium, where they are dried and pressed before being permanently preserved on sheets of paper. An herbarium is a collection of sheets that contain varied specimens as well as reliable information about them. These sheets are carefully conserved to be used in the future. They are marked with a label on the right-hand side, in the lower corner, which contains the following information:

• The date on which the specimen was collected is given here as well.
• The specimen’s English name is given here.
• The specimen’s genus and species.
• The name of the collector who was responsible for acquiring the specimen.
• The geographic location where the specimen was collected.
• The specimen’s native name is in the area where it was found.

These herbariaos are useful for taxonomic investigations since they provide a quick source of reference. They are also quite important since they provide information on the flora and animals of the surrounding area. With the use of this knowledge, we can track down wild varieties and their relatives who are related to plants that are less commercially viable.

Herbarium Technique

• Collection: The plant materials are gathered in this step. This is possible if you have a scientific mind and an aesthetic sense. The material to be used in the determination process should be perfect and complete. This means that they must have completely developed leaves as well as a fully developed inflorescence. The woody elements are represented by the twigs. They measure between 30 and 40 centimetres in length. With the subsurface sections of the herbaceous plants, the herbaceous plants are harvested. When creating herbariums and botanical gardens, it is important to remember that the gathering of unhealthy plants should be avoided at all costs. The collections that are made should be stored in metallic vasculum or polythene bags until they are needed. This should be done to keep the moisture in the air.
• Drying: It is recommended that plant specimens that have been collected be pressed in standard newspaper folders, with no overlapping of the specimens. These folders should then be stored in a field press for future reference. It is necessary to change the moistened folders regularly to prevent the blackening and degradation of plant material. 
• Poisoning: Microbes must be poisoned to prevent the proliferation of microorganisms. The reagent employed in the process of poisoning is mercuric chloride. Following this procedure, the specimens are dried once more.
• Mounting, Stitching, and Labelling: After the specimens have been treated with poison, they are dried and then glued and stitched to the herbarium sheets to complete the process. The field data is input on the lower right-hand side of the screen. Fragment packets are little paper envelopes that are affixed to the herbarium sheets and used to hold the seeds and flowers for the specimens in the collection.
• Deposition: The sheets are grouped in a tree-like fashion according to their species and classification. These sheets are organised by the Bentham and Hooker categorization scheme of organisation. The insects such as silverfish are also killed by the use of DDT and copper sulphate, which are applied to them at intervals of six months.

Importance of herbarium

• It supplies a wealth of information and stuff.
• Contributed to a wide range of taxonomic investigations.
• It contributes to the determination of a taxon’s conservation status.
• It is useful in taxonomical research as a research tool.
• It serves as a foundational resource for the identification of nearly all plants in the country, if not the entire planet.
• As a source of information for the estimation of world biodiversity.
• It serves as a starting point for data on the distribution and abundance of keystone species in the environment.
• The study of distributional ranges and population biology is made easier with this tool.
• The specimen tag contains all of the information about the plant specimen, including its habit, local name, bloom colour, and so on, for further botanical, ethnobotanical, and phytogeographical studies, among other things.
• It might prove useful as a source of material for studies in anatomy, palynology, cytotaxonomy, biochemistry, and pharmaceuticals, among other things.
• The herbarium is used to assist in the teaching of plant taxonomy.

Function of herbarium

Material and data preservation facility:

In the herbarium, you will find a collection of plant specimens that have essential information written on their labels. Even though the natural topography and vegetation of certain locations have altered or become extinct, the material in the herbarium serves as a permanent record of the flora of those regions. The herbarium preserves evidence of what once existed in these areas of the world.

Labels with sufficient information on habitat, common name, native usage, and ecological comments such as frequency and abundance of species, adjacent plants, habits, and so on are attached to the specimens in the herbarium.

When carefully studied and analysed, these types of data for a particular species, but from different collections from different regions, can provide valuable material for the almost complete description of various taxonomic characters such as morphological range of variation, distribution, and so on.

An herbarium obtains new material through the collection of its employees, as well as through gifts, trades, and other means. As a result, it serves as a material and data repository.

The following is the role in teaching and research:

The herbarium is used to assist in the teaching of botany to undergraduate and postgraduate students. If fresh material is not accessible at the time of the course, a teacher can use herbarium specimens to supplement the course material while lecturing.

Besides serving as a source of material, it is a crucial necessity for biosystematics study, since it allows for accurate identification and nomenclature. In addition, it serves as a source of study material for anatomical, palynological, and chemotaxonomic investigations.

Conclusion

Herbaria are sometimes found as a component of natural history museums, as well as in botanic gardens and educational institutes. Paris and New York are home to the world’s greatest herbarium collections, which are combined to form the Louvre. Millions of specimens are housed within these vast collections.