print add to favorites

by
Topics: Collections, Middle School, Science
You have the Collections Merit badge

Botany, the study of plants, is a very important field of science.  Many of the medicines we use, as well as most of the foods we eat, come from plants.  Botanists cannot go into the field to study every single kind of plant from all over the world so they create an herbarium, which is a kind of plant library.  The herbarium library is composed of sheets of paper holding a plant that has been dried and glued onto the paper. Each plant is labeled so that the botanist can studied that plant at any time. In this activity we are going to press and dry a flower and then make our own herbarium sheet!

What You Need:
  • Paper – 11x16 heavy cardstock
  • Paper – can be printer paper
  • Plant – can be any plant you find but you need to get some of the root system and it should be small enough that it will fit onto your paper
  • Pen
  • Pencil
  • Glue
  • Newspapers
  • Heavy books
What You Do:
  1. First obtain a "specimen" - your plant.  You will want to make sure you get some of the roots and that you clean the roots of excess dirt by brushing them off (try not to get your specimen wet). Note: If you are collecting in the wild, make sure you do not collect a protected species and that you have permission before collecting on private property.
  2. Next, place it between two sheets of newsprint and inbetween some heavy books.  Stack more heavy books on top.  This process will press your flower and dry it out, and can take up to a week or more. 
  3. When your flower is pressed, remove it from the newsprint and carefully glue it to the 11x16 paper. Have the paper go the long way (16") so that you have plenty of room for your plant.
  4. Take your printer paper, cut a 3x4 piece of paper and glue this onto the bottom right corner of your herbarium sheet.

On this piece of paper you will write:

  • Specimen: (See if you can find the Latin name in a flower book)
  • Collector: (your name)
  • Where it was collected:
  • When it was collected:

To make it more complete, label your flower parts with a pencil.  See if you can identify the stem, leaf, petals, pistol, stamen and root.  When you are done you will have a beautiful piece of art and a valuable piece of science. Conitnue to make sheets and then hole-punch them to make an herbarium book!