Students will explore about the history of Herbarium and few Botanical gardens of world, India and local area. Students will know about herbarium techniques. Students will able to make Herbarium by their own.

1. HERBARIUM
THEIR TECHNIQUE
&
SIGNIFICANCE
@
FEW BOTANICAL GARDENS
OF INDIA
Dr. Priya Trivedi
M.Sc.(BOTANY), M.Ed., Ph.D.

2. INTRODUCTION
A herbarium is a place where plant specimens
collected from different places are preserved in
pressed & dried condition on sheets with a label
which contains different informations.

3. History
➢ The name herbarium was first used by Linnaeus for
collection of dried & pressed plants.
➢ Luca Ghini (1490) of Italy has been the initiator of the art
of herbarium.
➢ The oldest preserved herbarium specimen is kept in Rome
collected by Gherards Cibo.
➢ A student of Luca Ghini in the Year 1539.

7. ➢ In India information about morphology, occurrence &
uses of plants are available since vedic era & in
several samhita.
➢ In1786, William Roxburgh established a herbarium
➢ In India on the basement of Royal Botanical Garden in
Calcutta.

9. ➢ Lawerence Shelter (1969) -
Herbaria refers to simply a dried & pressed collection of plant
arranged in an accepted system of classification.
➢ Fosberg &Socket (1965) - A modern herbarium is a great filling
system in the form of actual specimens of the plants & secondary
in the form of published information, pictures & recorded notes.

13. ➢ INTERNATIONAL HERBARIA - With 4 millon sps.
➢ NATIONAL HERBARIA - Covering Country
concerned.
➢ LOCAL HERBARIA - Covering a region in a country.
➢ SPECIAL HERBARIA - Often small with limited sps.

14. ➢ Herbarium in different countries remain associated with
• Colleges,
• Universities,
• Scientific societies,
• Research institutes,
• Botanical gardens.
➢ Overall 1600 worlds most important herbaria are listed in
Index Herbarium (Holmgren et al;1981)

15. 1.Field equipments
2.Plant collection
3.Pressing, drying & poisoning
4. Mounting & labeling
5.Preservation of Herbarium sheets
HERBARIUM TECHNIQUE :-

16. ➢ Scissors for cutting woody twigs &other parts of shrubs & trees.
➢ Trowel for digging roots, bulbs, rhizome etc.
➢ One sharp knife.
➢ One pair forceps.
➢ Vasculum for collecting specimens.
➢ Herbarium press with blotting paper.
➢ One field book.
➢ Thread for tagging
➢ Hand lens.
Field equipments-

20. ➢Plants should be collected from different localities & habitat.
➢Plant should be healthy.
➢Diseased plants or their parts should not be collected.
➢In case of herb complete plant & in case of shrubs & trees flowering
& fruiting twig should be complete & bent in V or M shape.
➢A field notebook should be maintained
➢Collected plants should be kept in either in vasculum or
polythenebags.
PLANT COLLECTION

23. ➢ Collected plants should be pressed carefully on old news paper or
blotting paper.
➢ The newspaper sheets should be changed frequently after 24,
48,72 hrs & then 7dfays to avoid blackening & decaying of plant
materials.
➢ After complete drying the specimen are given poisoning treatment
by 0.2%Hgcl2. Hgcl2 in absolute alcohol.
➢ It is again dried & kept ready for mounting.
Pressing, drying & poisoning

26. ➢ The specimen must be mounted for permanent record on a sheet called as
Herbarium sheet of standard size i.e 11.5 X 17.5.
➢ Specimens are mounted on the sheet with the help of gum or cellotape.etc
➢ Each specimen should be labelled .Label should be on lower right hand corner of
sheet. with following informations.
❑ Plant no.
❑ Botanical name
❑ Local name
❑ Family
❑ Locality
❑ Date of collection
❑ Abundance
❑ Altitude
❑ Name of plant collector
❑ Remark
Mounting & labeling-

30. ➢ To avoid attack of silver fish, bookworm e.t.c. It is
necessary to spray the specimen with insect repellent
or disinfectant as D.D.T.
➢ Naphthalene balls may be use.
➢ After identification herbarium sheets are kept in thin
paper folder.
➢ Finally kept in Almirah according to any accepted
system of classification.
Benthem & Hooker system of classification.
Preservation of herbarium sheets-

33. ➢
It is a source of knowledge about the flora of a region or a locality or
a country.
➢ It is very much useful in the study of cytology, in studying the struct
ure of DNA, chemotaxonomy, numerical taxonomy, etc.
➢ It is also used as a reservoir of gene pool studies.
➢ It provides the important materials for the anatomical studies.
➢ It is also used as a data store which gives us a lot of information abo
ut the various details about plants.
Some of the importance of Herbarium

34. ➢The type specimens present in the herbaria
help in the correct identification of plants.
➢Morphological characters of pollens which
are stored in the herbaria remain unchanged
even up to 200 years.

35. ➢ Herbarium specimens are useful as references for plant identification and for the
determination of plant locations and ranges, abundance, habitat, and flowering and
fruiting periods.
➢ They are used for studies in which the differences between plant species are
evaluated and described (monographs) or in which the species growing in a region
are reported (floras).
➢ Herbarium has a great role in medicobotany as it provides material for ethnobotany,
phytochemical, pharmacological & clinical researches.
➢ It provides list of endangered sps. of any region.
➢ These are the various uses and importance of herbaria. Hence various herbaria are
located at the national and international centers.

36. ➢ Largest herbarium of the world is situated in
Royal Botanical Garden.
➢ It's a 326-acre site at Kew with 40 historically
important buildings; it became a UNESCO World
Heritage Site on 3 July 2003.
➢ The collections at Kew and Wakehurst Place
include over 28,000 taxa of living plants, 8.3
million plant and fungal herbarium specimens,
and 30,000 species in the seed bank.

42. Some of the important Herbaria (Both National and International):
➢
Herbarium of Royal Botanical Garden – Kew, London in England - More than
60,00,000 specimens.
➢ New York Botanical Garden-New York -U.S.A.- More than 3,000,000 specimens.
➢ Museum of National History, -Paris –More than 5,000,000 specimens.
➢ Herbarium of Indian Botanical Garden- Kolkata, India - More than 10,00,000
specimens
➢ Botanical Survey of India – Coimbatore -Tamil Nadu- More than 1,90,000
specimens
➢ Forest Research Institute-Dehradoon -More than 3,000,000 specimens
➢ B.S.I-Allahabad-U.P-More than 40,000 specimens
➢ B.S.I-Shillong -Meghalaya- More than 100,000 specimens

43. LARGEST HERBARIA IN THE WORLD (After Shetler, 1969)
Location Abbreviation No. of Specimens Rank by Size
Kew, England K 6,500,000 1
Leningrad, USSR LE 6,000,000 2
Paris, France p 5,000,000 3
Geneva, Switzerland G 4,000,000 4
Lyon, France LY 3,800,000 5
Cambridge, Mass. (Com
bined herbaria of Harvar
d University)
A, AMES, ECON, FH, GH,
NEB
3,540,000
New York (Bot. Gard.), N
ew York
NY 3,000,000 8
Washington, D.C. (U.S. N
at. Herb.)
US 3,000,000 8
Chicago, Illinois F 2,350,000 11
St. Louis, Mo. (Mo. Bot.
Gard.)
MO 1,700,000 14
Berkeley, California UC 1,225,000 21
Ann Arbor, Mich. MICH 1,000,000 24
Philadelphia, Pa. PH 1,000,000 24

44. ➢ Indian Botanical Garden, Sibpur, Kolkata has the largest
herbarium in India.
➢ It was established by the Botanical Survey of India,
about one million specimens.
➢ World-wide, mainly phanerogams and ferns of India
and neighbouring countries of South and South East
Asia.
➢ In addition to these there are some authentic
collections of Cryptogams, Associated Botanic
Gardens: Indian Botanic Garden, Calcutta, and Lloyd
Botanic Garden, Darjeeling.

51. ➢ The herbarium of the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun has about
3, 00,000 specimens. The herbaria of Agricultural College and
Research Institute, Coimbatore and National Botanical Gardens,
Lucknow, have about 200,000 and 40,000 specimens respectively.
➢ There are about 25,000 specimens in the herbarium of the Divisions
of Mycology and Plant Pathyology at Indian Agricultural Research
Institute, New Delhi. The herbarium of the Division of Botany at
I.A.R.I. New Delhi, contains about 3000 specimens.

52. Chakraverty, R.K. and Mukhopadhyay, D.P., (1990). A Directory of Botanic Gardens and Parks in
India. Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta, India.
http://www.walkthroughindia.com/offbeat/15-beautiful-botanical-gardens-india-visit/
http://www.ugaoo.com/knowledge-center/top-8-botanical-gardens-of-india/
https://indiagardening.com/gardens/top-5-botanical-gardens-in-india/
WEBSITES AND FEW LINKS
RESEARCH PAPER
https://www.facebook.com/CSIR-National-Botanical-Research-Institute-Lucknow-India-
315322921870856/

53. THANKU