.
For preservationof plant material on a herbarium sheet the following tools and steps are required to be followed.
Tools magazines Digger and pruning knife, sickle with long handle, vasculum, polythene bags, glue, labels, or newspapers, blotting papers, plant press, field notebook, herbarium sheets, small transparent polythene bags.
One can prepare herbarium sheets by cutting Papers of size 29x 41.5cm(11 1/2 X 16 1/2)
The preparation of a herbarium specimen required following steps
(i) Collection of plant or plantparts.
(ii)PressingIt involves the Spreading and pressing of collected specimen over a newspaper
so as to preserve its all parts.
(iii) Drying It involves the drying of the specimen between the folds of newspaper.
(iv)Poisoning Antifungal (dipping in 2% HgCl,) and pesticidal (DDT) treatment of the dried ,
specimen.
(v) Mounting It involves mounting of the specimen over a herbarium sheet.
(vi)Labelling and identification of the dried specimenarethelast steps, while preparing a
herbarium sheet.
Tools/equipments required for the collection of herbarium specimensare as follows
(i) A tin or aluminium container of 50 x 30 x 15cm size,
(ii) Collection bags/plastic/polythene bags.
(ili) Digger for digging roots.
(iv) Magnifying lens of at least 10X magnification.
(v) Field note book,
A preserved plant material on the herbarium sheet may provide information about the family,genus,species, date of collection, area of collection, etc., for taxonomic studies.
