HERBARIUM

In botany, a herbarium is a collection of preserved plant specimens. These specimens may be whole plants or plant parts: these will usually be in a dried form, mounted on a sheet, but depending upon the material may also be kept in alcohol or other preservative. The same term is often used in mycology to describe an equivalent collection of preserved fungi.
The term can also refer to the building where the specimens are stored, or the scientific institute that not only stores but researches these specimens. The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa; some specimens may be types.

Contents

Form

Uses

See also

External links

Form

To preserve their form and color, plants collected in the field are spread flat on sheets of newsprint and dried, usually in a plant press, between blotters or absorbent paper. The specimens, which are then mounted on sheets of stiff white paper, are labeled with all essential data, such as date and place found, description of the plant, altitude, and special habitat conditions. The sheet is then placed in a protective case. As a precaution against insect attack, the pressed plant is frozen or poisoned and the case disinfected.
Detailed information on where and when the plant was collected, habitat, color (since it may fade over time), and the name of collector is usually included.

Uses

Herbaria are essential for the study of plant taxonomy, the study of geographic distributions, and the stabilizing of nomenclature. Thus it is desirable to include in a specimen as much of the plant as possible (e.g., flowers, stems, leaves, seed, and fruit). Linnaeus' herbarium now belongs to the Linnean Society in England.
Many universities, museums, and botanical gardens maintain herbaria. Herbaria have also proven very useful as sources of plant DNA for use in taxonomy and molecular systematics. The largest herbaria in the world, in approximate order of decreasing size, are:

★ Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (P) (Paris, France)

★ Royal Botanic Gardens (K) (Kew, England, UK)

★ New York Botanical Garden (NY) (Bronx, New York, USA)

★ Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève (G) (Geneva, Switzerland)

★ Komarov Botanical Institute (LE) (St. Petersburg, Russia)

★ Swedish Museum of Natural History (S) (Stockholm, Sweden)

★ British Museum of Natural History (BM) (London, England, UK)

★ Harvard University (HUH) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA)

★ Missouri Botanical Garden (MO) (St. Louis, Missouri, USA)

★ United States National Herbarium (Smithsonian Institution) (US) (Washington, DC, USA)

★ Université Montpellier (MPU) (Montpellier, France)

★ The Field Museum (F) (Chicago, Illinois, USA)

★ Claude E. Phillips Herbarium (Dover, DE, USA)[[1]]

See also

★ Systematics

★ Taxonomy

★ Virtual Herbarium

★ Plant collecting

External links

★ Index Herbariorum

★ Linnean Herbarium

★ Hornsby Shire Council Herbarium

★ Herbarium at Kew Gardens in London

★ Herbarium at Cambridge

★ University and Jepson Herbaria at the University of California, Berkeley

★ Herbarium of toxic plants

★ H.G.W.J. Schweickerdt Herbarium, Pretoria, South Africa