A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...
specimens and associated data used for scientific study.
The specimens may be whole plants or plant parts; these will usually be in dried form mounted on a sheet of paper (called '' exsiccatum'', plur. ''exsiccata'') but, depending upon the material, may also be stored in boxes or kept in alcohol or other preservative. The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant
taxa
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; plural taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular nam ...
; some specimens may be types.
The same term is often used in
mycology
Mycology is the branch of biology concerned with the study of fungi, including their genetic and biochemical properties, their taxonomy and their use to humans, including as a source for tinder, traditional medicine, food, and entheogen ...
to describe an equivalent collection of preserved
fungi
A fungus ( : fungi or funguses) is any member of the group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds, as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, separately fr ...
, otherwise known as a fungarium. A xylarium is a herbarium specialising in specimens of wood. The term hortorium (as in the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium) has occasionally been applied to a herbarium specialising in preserving material of
horticultural
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
origin.
History
The making of herbaria is an ancient phenomenon, at least six centuries old, although the techniques have changed little, and has been an important step in the transformation of the study of plants from a branch of medicine to an independent discipline, and to make available plant material from far away places and over a long period of time.
The oldest traditions of making herbarium collections have been traced to Italy. The ''Bologna'' physician and botanist,
Luca Ghini
Luca Ghini (Casalfiumanese, 1490 – Bologna, 4 May 1556) was an Italian physician and botanist, notable as the creator of the first recorded herbarium, as well as the first botanical garden in Europe.
Biography
Ghini was born in Casalfiumanese, ...
(1490–1556) reintroduced the study of actual plants as opposed to relying on classical texts, such as
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of '' De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vo ...
, which lacked sufficient accuracy for identification. At first, he needed to make available plant material, even in winter, hence his ''Hortus hiemalis'' (winter garden) or ''Hortus siccus'' (dry garden). He and his students placed freshly gathered plants between two sheets of paper and applied pressure to flatten them and absorb moisture. The dried specimen was then glued onto a page in a book and annotated. This practice was supplemented by the parallel development of the ''Hortus simplicium'' or ''Orto botanico'' (
botanical garden
A botanical garden or botanic gardenThe terms ''botanic'' and ''botanical'' and ''garden'' or ''gardens'' are used more-or-less interchangeably, although the word ''botanic'' is generally reserved for the earlier, more traditional gardens, an ...
) to supply material, which he established at the
University of Pisa
The University of Pisa ( it, Università di Pisa, UniPi), officially founded in 1343, is one of the oldest universities in Europe.
History
The Origins
The University of Pisa was officially founded in 1343, although various scholars place ...
in 1544.
Although Ghini's herbarium has not survived, the oldest extant herbarium is that of
Gherardo Cibo
Gherardo Cibo also known by the alias of Ulisse Severini da Cingoli (1512 − 30 January 1600) was an artist and a herbalist from Italy. The herbarium that he began in 1532 is the oldest surviving example of the method invented in Italy by his con ...
from around 1532. While most of the early herbaria were prepared with sheets bound into books,
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...
came up with the idea of maintaining them on free sheets that allowed their easy re-ordering within cabinets.
Specimen preservation
Commensurate with the need to identify the specimen, it is essential to include in a herbarium sheet as much of the plant as possible (e.g., roots, flowers, stems, leaves, seed, and fruit), or at least representative parts of them in the case of large specimens. To preserve their form and colour, plants collected in the field are carefully arranged and spread flat between thin sheets, known as ''flimsies'' (equivalent to sheets of newsprint), and dried, usually in a plant press, between blotters or absorbent paper.
During the drying process the specimens are retained within their flimsies at all times to minimise damage, and only the thicker, absorbent drying sheets are replaced. For some plants it may prove helpful to allow the fresh specimen to wilt slightly before being arranged for the press. An opportunity to check, rearrange and further lay out the specimen to best reveal the required features of the plant occurs when the damp absorbent sheets are changed during the drying/pressing process.
The specimens, which are then mounted on sheets of stiff white paper, are labelled 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.
Certain groups of plants are soft, bulky, or otherwise not amenable to drying and mounting on sheets. For these plants, other methods of preparation and storage may be used. For example,
conifer cone
A conifer cone (in formal botany, botanical usage: strobilus, plural strobili) is a seed-bearing organ on gymnosperm plants. It is usually woody, ovoid to globular, including scales and bracts arranged around a central axis, especially in con ...
s and
palm
Palm most commonly refers to:
* Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand
* Palm plants, of family Arecaceae
**List of Arecaceae genera
* Several other plants known as "palm"
Palm or Palms may also refer to:
Music
* Palm (ba ...
fronds may be stored in labelled boxes. Representative flowers or fruits may be pickled in
formaldehyde
Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is a naturally occurring organic compound with the formula and structure . The pure compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde (refer to section F ...
to preserve their three-dimensional structure. Small specimens, such as
moss
Mosses are small, non-vascular flowerless plants in the taxonomic division Bryophyta (, ) '' sensu stricto''. Bryophyta (''sensu lato'', Schimp. 1879) may also refer to the parent group bryophytes, which comprise liverworts, mosses, and hor ...
es and
lichen
A lichen ( , ) is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi species in a mutualistic relationship.
No matter the method of preservation, detailed information on where and when the plant was collected, habitat, color (since it may fade over time), and the name of the collector is usually included.
The value of a herbarium is much enhanced by the possession of ''types'', that is, the original specimens on which the study of a species was founded. Thus the herbarium at the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, which is especially rich in the earlier collections made in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, contains the types of many species founded by the earlier workers in
botany
Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek w ...
. It is also rich in types of Australian plants from the collections of
Sir Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.
Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James C ...
and Robert Brown, and contains in addition many valuable modern collections.
Collections management
Most herbaria utilize a standard system of organizing their specimens into herbarium cases. Specimen sheets are stacked in groups by the
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
to which they belong and placed into a large lightweight folder that is labelled on the bottom edge. Groups of species folders are then placed together into larger, heavier folders by
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...
. The genus folders are then sorted by taxonomic
family
Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...
according to the standard system selected for use by the herbarium and placed into pigeonholes in herbarium cabinets.
Locating a specimen filed in the herbarium requires knowing the
nomenclature
Nomenclature (, ) is a system of names or terms, or the rules for forming these terms in a particular field of arts or sciences. The principles of naming vary from the relatively informal naming conventions, conventions of everyday speech to the i ...
and
classification Classification is a process related to categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated and understood.
Classification is the grouping of related facts into classes.
It may also refer to:
Business, organizat ...
used by the herbarium. It also requires familiarity with possible name changes that have occurred since the specimen was collected, since the specimen may be filed under an older name.
Modern herbaria often maintain electronic databases of their collections. Many herbaria have initiatives to
digitize
DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer- ...
specimens to produce a
virtual herbarium
In botany, a virtual herbarium is a herbarium in a digitized form. That is, it concerns a collection of digital images of preserved plants or plant parts. Virtual herbaria often are established to improve availability of specimens to a wider audie ...
. These records and images are made publicly accessible via the
Internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
when possible.
Uses
Herbarium collections can have great significance and value to science, and have many uses.
Herbaria have long been essential for the study of
plant taxonomy
Plant taxonomy is the science that finds, identifies, describes, classifies, and names plants. It is one of the main branches of taxonomy (the science that finds, describes, classifies, and names living things).
Plant taxonomy is closely allied ...
, the study of geographic distributions, and the stabilizing of nomenclature.
Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...
's herbarium, which contains over 4,000 types, now belongs to the
Linnean Society
The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature colle ...
in England. Modern scientists continue to develop novel, non-traditional uses for herbarium specimens that extend beyond what the original collectors could have anticipated.
Specimens housed in herbaria may be used to catalogue or identify the
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
E ...
of an area. A large collection from a single area is used in writing a field guide or manual to aid in the identification of plants that grow there. With more specimens available, the author or the guide will better understand the variability of form in the plants and the natural distribution over which the plants grow.
Herbaria also preserve a historical record of change in
vegetation
Vegetation is an assemblage of plant species and the ground cover they provide. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic character ...
over time. In some cases, plants become
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
in one area or may become extinct altogether. In such cases, specimens preserved in a herbarium can represent the only record of the plant's original distribution. Environmental scientists make use of such data to track changes in
climate
Climate is the long-term weather pattern in an area, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. Some of the meteorologic ...
and human impact.
Herbaria have also proven very useful as source of plant DNA for use in taxonomy and
molecular systematics
Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...
. Even ancient fungaria represent a source for DNA-barcoding of ancient samples.
Many kinds of scientists and naturalists use herbaria to preserve voucher specimens; representative samples of plants used in a particular study to demonstrate precisely the source of their data, or to enable confirmation of identification at a future date.
They may also be a repository of viable seeds for rare species.Wiley online library /ref>
Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève
The Conservatory and Botanical Garden of the city of Geneva () is a museum and an institution of the City of Geneva.
Establishment and location
It was founded in 1817 in a former area of ''Bastions Park'' in 1817 by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle ...
United States National Herbarium
The United States National Herbarium is a collection of five million preserved plant specimens housed in the Department of Botany at the National Museum of Natural History, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution. It represents about 8% of the ...
(
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...
Université Claude Bernard
Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 (french: link=no, Université Claude-Bernard Lyon 1, UCBL) is one of the three public universities of Lyon, France. It is named after the French physiologist Claude Bernard and specialises in science and technol ...
University and Jepson Herbaria
The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botanical natural histo ...
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden
The Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden, previously known as Indian Botanic Garden and the Calcutta Botanic Garden, is situated in Shibpur, Howrah near Kolkata. They are commonly known as the Calcutta Botanical Garden and prev ...
Herbal
A herbal is a book containing the names and descriptions of plants, usually with information on their medicinal, tonic, culinary, toxic, hallucinatory, aromatic, or magical powers, and the legends associated with them.Arber, p. 14. A herbal m ...
*
List of herbaria
This is a list of active herbaria, organized first by continent where the herbarium is located, then within each continent by size of the collection. The list is based on the Index Herbariorum, a global directory of herbaria and their associated s ...
*
Plant collecting
Plant collecting is the acquisition of plant specimens for the purposes of research, cultivation, or as a hobby. Plant specimens may be kept alive, but are more commonly dried and pressed to preserve the quality of the specimen. Plant collecting i ...
Virtual herbarium
In botany, a virtual herbarium is a herbarium in a digitized form. That is, it concerns a collection of digital images of preserved plants or plant parts. Virtual herbaria often are established to improve availability of specimens to a wider audie ...
References
Bibliography
*
*
External links
* ''For links to a specific herbarium or institution, see the
List of herbaria
This is a list of active herbaria, organized first by continent where the herbarium is located, then within each continent by size of the collection. The list is based on the Index Herbariorum, a global directory of herbaria and their associated s ...