What is a Herbarium?

A herbarium is a book of pressed plants. In order to preserve the plants for a long time. they’re pressed and then attached to individual sheets of paper. These sheets are later bound together as a book.

 “Herbarium” is a Latin word that means ‘herb book’. The first herbaria were made by plant lovers to look at in the winter as a replacement for the garden in the cold season. Later on, botanists and biologists borrowed this idea and created scientific herbaria full of plant specimens that they found on their research trips and travels. The Swedish naturalist Carl von Linné (1707–1778), for example, who established the tradition of giving Latin names to all plant species, collected together a herbarium that contained over 14,000 pressed plants.

The herbaria that children made a couple of generations ago are now sought-after research material. With the help of these collections of pressed plants, scientists can detect the effects of environmental change, for example. 

It’s important to record specific information about each plant, since every species had its own characteristics such as leaf form, flower color, flowering season, and habitat – some plants grow in the forest and others in meadows. Most important are the plant’s name, and the place and date it was found.