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Herbarium

May 04, 2023

A herbarium (plural: herbaria) is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study.[2]

Herbarium book which dates from 1633. Made by the Flemish Bernardus Wynhouts.[1]

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.[3] The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa; some specimens may be types.

The same term is often used in mycology to describe an equivalent collection of preserved fungi, otherwise known as a fungarium.[4] A xylarium is a herbarium specialising in specimens of wood.[5] The term hortorium (as in the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium) has occasionally been applied to a herbarium specialising in preserving material of horticultural origin.[6]

History

 
Herbarium specimens ("exsiccata") of various Nepenthes at the Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, France
 
Herbarium book with Japanese plants, Siebold collection Leiden, 1825

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.[7]

The oldest traditions of making herbarium collections have been traced to Italy. The Bologna physician and botanist, Luca Ghini (1490–1556) reintroduced the study of actual plants as opposed to relying on classical texts, such as Dioscorides, 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.[8] This practice was supplemented by the parallel development of the Hortus simplicium or Orto botanico (botanical garden) to supply material, which he established at the University of Pisa in 1544.[9]

Although Ghini's herbarium has not survived,[10] the oldest extant herbarium is that of Gherardo Cibo from around 1532.[11] While most of the early herbaria were prepared with sheets bound into books, Carl Linnaeus came up with the idea of maintaining them on free sheets that allowed their easy re-ordering within cabinets.[12]

Specimen preservation

 
Preparing a plant for mounting

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.[13]

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 cones and palm fronds may be stored in labelled boxes. Representative flowers or fruits may be pickled in formaldehyde to preserve their three-dimensional structure. Small specimens, such as mosses and lichens, are often air-dried and packaged in small paper envelopes.[3]

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, 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. It is also rich in types of Australian plants from the collections of Sir Joseph Banks and Robert Brown, and contains in addition many valuable modern collections.[14]

Collections management

 
A large herbarium may have hundreds of cases filled with specimens.

Most herbaria utilize a standard system of organizing their specimens into herbarium cases. Specimen sheets are stacked in groups by the species 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. The genus folders are then sorted by taxonomic family according to the standard system selected for use by the herbarium and placed into pigeonholes in herbarium cabinets.[15]

Locating a specimen filed in the herbarium requires knowing the nomenclature and classification 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 specimens to produce a virtual herbarium. These records and images are made publicly accessible via the Internet when possible.

Uses

Herbarium collections can have great significance and value to science, and have many uses.[16][17] Herbaria have long been essential for the study of plant taxonomy, the study of geographic distributions, and the stabilizing of nomenclature. Linnaeus's herbarium, which contains over 4,000 types, now belongs to the Linnean Society in England.[18] Modern scientists continue to develop novel, non-traditional uses for herbarium specimens that extend beyond what the original collectors could have anticipated.[19]

Specimens housed in herbaria may be used to catalogue or identify the flora 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 over time. In some cases, plants become extinct 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 and human impact.

Herbaria have also proven very useful as source of plant DNA for use in taxonomy and molecular systematics. Even ancient fungaria represent a source for DNA-barcoding of ancient samples.[20]

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.[13]

They may also be a repository of viable seeds for rare species.[21]

Institutional herbaria

 
The Swedish Museum of Natural History (S), Stockholm, Sweden
Main article: List of herbaria

Many universities, museums, and botanical gardens maintain herbaria. The largest herbaria in the world, in approximate order of decreasing size, are:

See also

References

  1. ^ "Herbarius continens species plantarum tum patriarum tum exoticarum ad vivum prout nascuntur in horto infirmariae celeberrimae Abbatiae Diligemensis". lib.ugent.be. Retrieved 2020-08-27.
  2. ^ Edinburgh, Royal Botanic Garden. "Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh - What is a herbarium". www.rbge.org.uk. Retrieved 2016-03-25.
  3. ^ a b "Preparing and Storing Herbarium Specimens" (PDF). Conserve O Gram. National Park Service. November 2009. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  4. ^ "Fungarium". www.kew.org. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  5. ^ . www.kew.org. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 17 July 2016. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  6. ^ "Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium". plantbio.cals.cornell.edu. Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  7. ^ Thiers 2020, p. 13.
  8. ^ Thiers 2020, pp. 15–16.
  9. ^ Thiers 2020, p. 16.
  10. ^ Thiers 2020, p. 20.
  11. ^ Sprague & Nelmes 1931, p. 546.
  12. ^ Müller-Wille, Staffan (2006-06-01). "Linnaeus' herbarium cabinet: a piece of furniture and its function". Endeavour. 30 (2): 60–64. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2006.03.001. PMID 16600379.
  13. ^ a b Chater, Arthur O. "Collecting and Pressing Specimens" (PDF). www.bsbi.org.uk. Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  14. ^ "Herbarium", Parkstone Press International 2014
  15. ^ "HerbWeb - What is a Herbarium". apps.kew.org. Retrieved 2016-03-25.
  16. ^ Funk, Vicki (January 2003). "The Importance of Herbaria". Plant Science Bulletin. 49 (3): 94. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  17. ^ Funk, Vicki. "100 Uses for an Herbarium (Well at Least 72)" (PDF). peabody.yale.edu. The Yale University Herbarium. Retrieved 2 February 2016.
  18. ^ "Linnaean Collections". The Linnean Society. Retrieved 2019-10-23.
  19. ^ Heberling, J. Mason; Isaac, Bonnie L. (2017). "Herbarium specimens as exaptations: New uses for old collections". American Journal of Botany. 104 (7): 963–965. doi:10.3732/ajb.1700125. ISSN 1537-2197. PMID 28701296.
  20. ^ Forin, Niccolò; Nigris, Sebastiano; Voyron, Samuele; Girlanda, Mariangela; Vizzini, Alfredo; Casadoro, Giorgio; Baldan, Barbara (2018). "Next Generation Sequencing of Ancient Fungal Specimens: The Case of the Saccardo Mycological Herbarium". Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. 6. doi:10.3389/fevo.2018.00129.
  21. ^ Wiley online library

Bibliography

External links

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Herbarium.
  • For links to a specific herbarium or institution, see the List of herbaria.
  • Index Herbariorum
  • Linnean Herbarium
  • (online database with 20,000 sheets in HD)


May 04, 2023
herbarium, herbarium, plural, herbaria, collection, preserved, plant, specimens, associated, data, used, scientific, study, book, which, dates, from, 1633, made, flemish, bernardus, wynhouts, specimens, whole, plants, plant, parts, these, will, usually, dried,. A herbarium plural herbaria is a collection of preserved plant specimens and associated data used for scientific study 2 Herbarium book which dates from 1633 Made by the Flemish Bernardus Wynhouts 1 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 3 The specimens in a herbarium are often used as reference material in describing plant taxa some specimens may be types The same term is often used in mycology to describe an equivalent collection of preserved fungi otherwise known as a fungarium 4 A xylarium is a herbarium specialising in specimens of wood 5 The term hortorium as in the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium has occasionally been applied to a herbarium specialising in preserving material of horticultural origin 6 Contents 1 History 2 Specimen preservation 3 Collections management 4 Uses 5 Institutional herbaria 6 See also 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External linksHistory Edit Herbarium specimens exsiccata of various Nepenthes at the Museum National d Histoire Naturelle in Paris France Herbarium book with Japanese plants Siebold collection Leiden 1825 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 7 The oldest traditions of making herbarium collections have been traced to Italy The Bologna physician and botanist Luca Ghini 1490 1556 reintroduced the study of actual plants as opposed to relying on classical texts such as Dioscorides 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 8 This practice was supplemented by the parallel development of the Hortus simplicium or Orto botanico botanical garden to supply material which he established at the University of Pisa in 1544 9 Although Ghini s herbarium has not survived 10 the oldest extant herbarium is that of Gherardo Cibo from around 1532 11 While most of the early herbaria were prepared with sheets bound into books Carl Linnaeus came up with the idea of maintaining them on free sheets that allowed their easy re ordering within cabinets 12 Specimen preservation Edit Preparing a plant for mounting 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 13 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 cones and palm fronds may be stored in labelled boxes Representative flowers or fruits may be pickled in formaldehyde to preserve their three dimensional structure Small specimens such as mosses and lichens are often air dried and packaged in small paper envelopes 3 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 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 It is also rich in types of Australian plants from the collections of Sir Joseph Banks and Robert Brown and contains in addition many valuable modern collections 14 Collections management Edit A large herbarium may have hundreds of cases filled with specimens Most herbaria utilize a standard system of organizing their specimens into herbarium cases Specimen sheets are stacked in groups by the species 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 The genus folders are then sorted by taxonomic family according to the standard system selected for use by the herbarium and placed into pigeonholes in herbarium cabinets 15 Locating a specimen filed in the herbarium requires knowing the nomenclature and classification 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 specimens to produce a virtual herbarium These records and images are made publicly accessible via the Internet when possible Uses EditHerbarium collections can have great significance and value to science and have many uses 16 17 Herbaria have long been essential for the study of plant taxonomy the study of geographic distributions and the stabilizing of nomenclature Linnaeus s herbarium which contains over 4 000 types now belongs to the Linnean Society in England 18 Modern scientists continue to develop novel non traditional uses for herbarium specimens that extend beyond what the original collectors could have anticipated 19 Specimens housed in herbaria may be used to catalogue or identify the flora 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 over time In some cases plants become extinct 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 and human impact Herbaria have also proven very useful as source of plant DNA for use in taxonomy and molecular systematics Even ancient fungaria represent a source for DNA barcoding of ancient samples 20 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 13 They may also be a repository of viable seeds for rare species 21 Institutional herbaria Edit The Swedish Museum of Natural History S Stockholm Sweden Main article List of herbaria Many universities museums and botanical gardens maintain herbaria The largest herbaria in the world in approximate order of decreasing size are Museum National d Histoire Naturelle P Paris France New York Botanical Garden NY Bronx New York US Komarov Botanical Institute LE St Petersburg Russia Royal Botanic Gardens K Kew England UK Missouri Botanical Garden MO St Louis Missouri US Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Geneve G Geneva Switzerland Naturalis Biodiversity Center Nationaal Herbarium Nederland AMD L U WAG Leiden Netherlands The Natural History Museum BM London England UK Harvard University HUH Cambridge Massachusetts US Museum of Natural History of Vienna W Vienna Austria Swedish Museum of Natural History S Stockholm Sweden United States National Herbarium Smithsonian Institution US Washington DC US Universite Montpellier MPU Montpellier France Universite Claude Bernard LY Villeurbanne France Herbarium Universitatis Florentinae FI Florence Italy National Botanic Garden of Belgium BR Meise Belgium University of Helsinki H Helsinki Finland Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin Dahlem Zentraleinrichtung der Freien Universitat Berlin B Berlin Germany The Field Museum F Chicago Illinois US University of Copenhagen C Copenhagen Denmark Chinese National Herbarium Chinese Academy of Sciences PE Beijing People s Republic of China University and Jepson Herbaria UC JEPS Berkeley California US Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh E Edinburgh Scotland UK Herbarium Bogoriense BO Bogor West Java Indonesia Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Indian Botanic Garden Central National Herbarium CAL Howrah India Herbarium Hamburgense HBG Hamburg Germany See also EditConservation and restoration of herbaria Herbal List of herbaria Plant collecting Oshibana Virtual herbariumReferences Edit Herbarius continens species plantarum tum patriarum tum exoticarum ad vivum prout nascuntur in horto infirmariae celeberrimae Abbatiae Diligemensis lib ugent be Retrieved 2020 08 27 Edinburgh Royal Botanic Garden Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh What is a herbarium www rbge org uk Retrieved 2016 03 25 a b Preparing and Storing Herbarium Specimens PDF Conserve O Gram National Park Service November 2009 Retrieved 24 March 2016 Fungarium www kew org Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Retrieved 2 February 2016 Wood collection xylarium www kew org Royal Botanic Gardens Kew Archived from the original on 17 July 2016 Retrieved 2 February 2016 Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium plantbio cals cornell edu Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Retrieved 2 February 2016 Thiers 2020 p 13 Thiers 2020 pp 15 16 Thiers 2020 p 16 Thiers 2020 p 20 Sprague amp Nelmes 1931 p 546 Muller Wille Staffan 2006 06 01 Linnaeus herbarium cabinet a piece of furniture and its function Endeavour 30 2 60 64 doi 10 1016 j endeavour 2006 03 001 PMID 16600379 a b Chater Arthur O Collecting and Pressing Specimens PDF www bsbi org uk Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland Retrieved 2 February 2016 Herbarium Parkstone Press International 2014 HerbWeb What is a Herbarium apps kew org Retrieved 2016 03 25 Funk Vicki January 2003 The Importance of Herbaria Plant Science Bulletin 49 3 94 Retrieved 2 February 2016 Funk Vicki 100 Uses for an Herbarium Well at Least 72 PDF peabody yale edu The Yale University Herbarium Retrieved 2 February 2016 Linnaean Collections The Linnean Society Retrieved 2019 10 23 Heberling J Mason Isaac Bonnie L 2017 Herbarium specimens as exaptations New uses for old collections American Journal of Botany 104 7 963 965 doi 10 3732 ajb 1700125 ISSN 1537 2197 PMID 28701296 Forin Niccolo Nigris Sebastiano Voyron Samuele Girlanda Mariangela Vizzini Alfredo Casadoro Giorgio Baldan Barbara 2018 Next Generation Sequencing of Ancient Fungal Specimens The Case of the Saccardo Mycological Herbarium Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution 6 doi 10 3389 fevo 2018 00129 Wiley online libraryBibliography EditThiers Barbara M 2020 Herbarium The Quest to Preserve and Classify the World s Plants Timber Press ISBN 978 1 64326 052 5 Sprague T A Nelmes E 1 October 1931 The Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 48 325 545 642 doi 10 1111 j 1095 8339 1931 tb00596 x External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Herbarium For links to a specific herbarium or institution see the List of herbaria Index Herbariorum Linnean Herbarium Lamarck s Herbarium online database with 20 000 sheets in HD French Herbaria Network Montpellier Herbarium Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Herbarium amp oldid 1120392428, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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