In our family Bell pepper they love it, that’s why we plant it every year. Most of the varieties that I grow have been tested by me for more than one season; I cultivate them constantly. I also try to try something new every year. Pepper is a heat-loving plant and quite whimsical. Varietal and hybrid varieties of tasty and productive sweet peppers, which grow well for me, will be discussed further. I live in middle lane Russia.
Lush cheesecakes in a frying pan with banana-apple confiture - another recipe for everyone’s favorite dish. To prevent cheesecakes from falling off after cooking, remember a few simple rules. Firstly, only fresh and dry cottage cheese, secondly, no baking powder or soda, thirdly, the thickness of the dough - you can sculpt from it, it is not tight, but pliable. Good dough with a small amount of flour you will only get good cottage cheese, but here again see the “firstly” point.
It is no secret that many drugs from pharmacies have migrated to summer cottages. Their use, at first glance, seems so exotic that some summer residents are perceived with hostility. At the same time, potassium permanganate is a long-known antiseptic that is used in both medicine and veterinary medicine. In plant growing, a solution of potassium permanganate is used both as an antiseptic and as a fertilizer. In this article we will tell you how to properly use potassium permanganate in the garden.
Meat salad pork with mushrooms - a rural dish that can often be found on festive table in the village. This recipe is with champignons, but if possible, use Forest mushrooms, then be sure to cook it this way, it will be even tastier. You don’t need to spend a lot of time preparing this salad - put the meat in a pan for 5 minutes and another 5 minutes for slicing. Everything else happens practically without the participation of the cook - the meat and mushrooms are boiled, cooled, and marinated.
Cucumbers grow well not only in a greenhouse or conservatory, but also in open ground. Typically, cucumbers are sown from mid-April to mid-May. Harvesting in this case is possible from mid-July to the end of summer. Cucumbers cannot tolerate frost. That's why we don't sow them too early. However, there is a way to bring their harvest closer and taste the juicy beauties from your garden at the beginning of summer or even in May. It is only necessary to take into account some of the features of this plant.
Polyscias is an excellent alternative to classic variegated shrubs and woody ones. The elegant round or feathery leaves of this plant create a strikingly festive curly crown, and its elegant silhouettes and rather modest character make it an excellent candidate for the role of large plant in the house. More large leaves do not prevent it from successfully replacing Benjamin and Co. ficuses. Moreover, polyscias offers much more variety.
Pumpkin cinnamon casserole is juicy and incredibly tasty, a little like pumpkin pie, but unlike pie, it is more tender and just melts in your mouth! This perfect recipe sweet pastries for a family with children. As a rule, kids don’t really like pumpkin, but they never mind eating something sweet. Sweet pumpkin casserole is a delicious and healthy dessert, which, moreover, is very simple and quick to prepare. Try it! You'll like it!
A hedge is not only one of essential elements landscape design. She also performs various protective functions. If, for example, the garden borders a road, or a highway passes nearby, then hedge simply necessary. “Green walls” will protect the garden from dust, noise, wind and create a special comfort and microclimate. In this article we will look at optimal plants to create a hedge that can reliably protect the area from dust.
Many crops require picking (and more than one) in the first weeks of development, while for others transplantation is “contraindicated.” To “please” both of them, you can use non-standard containers for seedlings. Another good reason to try them is saving money. In this article we will tell you how to do without the usual boxes, pots, cassettes and tablets. And let’s pay attention to non-traditional, but very effective and interesting containers for seedlings.
Useful vegetable soup red cabbage with celery, red onion and beets - a vegetarian soup recipe that can also be prepared in fast days. For those who decide to lose a few extra pounds, I would advise not to add potatoes, and slightly reduce the amount olive oil(1 tablespoon is enough). The soup turns out to be very aromatic and thick, and during Lent you can serve a portion of the soup with lean bread - then it will be satisfying and healthy.
Surely everyone has already heard about the popular term “hygge”, which came to us from Denmark. This word cannot be translated into other languages of the world. Because it means a lot of things at once: comfort, happiness, harmony, spiritual atmosphere... In this northern country By the way, most of the time in the year there is cloudy weather and little sun. Summer is also short. And the level of happiness is one of the highest (the country regularly ranks first in the UN global rankings).
Meat balls in sauce with mashed potatoes- a simple second course prepared based on Italian cuisine. The more common name for this dish is meatballs or meatballs, but the Italians (and not only them) call such small round cutlets meat balls. The cutlets are first fried until golden brown, and then stewed in a thick vegetable sauce - it turns out very tasty, simply delicious! Any minced meat is suitable for this recipe - chicken, beef, pork.
Chrysanthemum is called the queen of autumn, because it is at this time that she bright inflorescences decorate the garden. But chrysanthemums can be grown throughout the season - from February to December, and in heated greenhouses - even during the winter months. If you organize the process correctly, you can implement planting material and chrysanthemum flowers all year round. This article will help you understand how much effort it takes to grow chrysanthemums in large quantities.
Collecting different herbs, flowers and leaves is very interesting, educational, it can become a great hobby for long years. But if you really want to collect a herbarium, you need to look at how to do it correctly in advance. It will be a big disappointment if, instead of beautiful dried plants, you end up with a fragile, brittle mess of an indeterminate color.
First of all, it is worth clarifying what a herbarium is in the classical sense. This is an album where a collection of plants has been selected, glued and signed - the Latin and common name. Of course, now you don’t have to take everything so literally, it could just be an album where a collection or a book is inserted, where plants are stored from the moment they were put there. Maybe it will be sheets of paper under glass, on which beautiful dried flowers or leaves are attached, there is a lot of room for creativity.
There are two ways. Classic and modern. The second one will be quick and simple, but the quality of such a herbarium will be very average. With this method, the plants are quickly dried using an iron:
- the raw material is smoothed;
- If the iron involves steaming and filling with water, drain the water;
- heat at minimum power;
- iron the plant, which is located between two sheets of paper, for 15 seconds;
- The iron is cooled for the same time and the procedure is repeated again.
The disadvantage of this method is that it is not always possible to avoid overheating the raw materials. When it overheats, it becomes brittle, loses color and, if you're really unlucky, can crumble in your hands.
You can correctly make a herbarium of plants, like a work of art, with the help of a book. It takes a long time, but the result will not disappoint. The manufacturing instructions are simple:
- the flower is smoothed out and placed between two clean sheets;
- the sheets are inserted between the pages of a thick book, which is not scary to spoil a little;
- the book is placed under the load;
- after a couple of weeks you can get it out with tweezers ready plant and placed in the album.
Watch the video on how to make a herbarium.
Whatever method is chosen, there are a number of details that are still important preparatory stage. They will help make the collection perfect.
- Flowers should not be collected in wet weather; they must be completely dry. Dew is also moisture and should be avoided.
- The collection is carried out on a warm day, preferably at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, when the air is well warmed up.
- The picked raw materials must be in full strength, there should be no signs of wilting or disease on it.
- The further away the plant is from the roadway, the better.
In addition, you cannot uproot the entire plant, especially if there are few of them in the foreseeable vicinity. When you need roots or a whole plant, you should look for a place where there is a lot of it. If leaves or flowers are collected from bushes (trees), then again you need to be careful and not break branches in vain.
If you need a branch, it’s better to take it with you sharp knife or pruning shears to cut rather than tear. In addition to how to assemble a herbarium from plants correctly, if you decide to dry it with the help of a book, you need to choose it correctly.
- The book should be of such a size that the raw material gets in the way and does not stick out, preferably with a reserve.
- It is better if it is a thick volume that can accommodate many plants.
- In any case, you need to pick up a few more to put on top as a weight.
- In order not to spoil the book, you should stock up on paper that will be used to cover the pages and plants.
The collection will dry faster if the sheets of paper are changed daily. In addition, this way the book will not become moldy and spoiled.
Often children are assigned to make a herbarium at home. Sometimes they may stipulate which plants or what type of plants should be in the collection. There is no single instruction on how to properly make a herbarium for school, also because the requirements may differ.
If there are no special requirements, then it is important not to use complex flowers to create a herbarium. For example, to dry a rose or dahlia flower, it is very difficult to dry, and even with help, a schoolchild will not have the patience to transfer each row of petals with cotton wool so that everything turns out correctly.
When a herbarium is made for a school, speed is often important. Then the iron method will come to the rescue. There is also an option to dry in the microwave, but this is for the most desperate and risky. If you can still control what is happening with an iron, then with a microwave you can only rely on luck and the choice of mode. But the main thing, no matter how great the rush, is not to dry it in the oven.
You can dry plants for herbal tea in the oven, because there are a lot of them at once and at low temperatures they will dry perfectly, but when it comes to one leaf, everything is hopeless. This is where the leaves most often overheat. The main secret of a successful school herbarium is strict adherence to the teacher’s requirements.
How to dry complex flowers
When collecting a collection for your own pleasure or to take beautiful photographs, sooner or later the turn of complex colors comes. You can find many master classes with photos on how to properly make a herbarium in this case.
Basic tips:
- the rose is dried either by disassembling it into petals or separating it from the stem, laying each row of petals with a thin layer of cotton wool, medical tweezers will help here, then the flower is placed under a press of no more than 10 kg;
- if you need to dry a peony, the flower is cut or torn into pieces (from four to eight), they are laid, like roses, with cotton wool and dried. Whole flowers are collected afterwards;
- tulips are never completely dried, the inflorescence is disassembled, the petals are dried as usual and then the flower is collected;
- if you want to dry an autumn dahlia, choose the most blooming flower, remove the middle and fill it with cotton wool, lift the petals and fill them in rows with a thin layer of cotton wool. Afterwards, both the front and back sides of the flower are also covered with cotton wool;
As you can see, there is nothing complicated in creating a collection of plants; you just need a little skill and strict adherence to the instructions. Since each plant has its own specifics, there are separate instructions for each type of flower or leaf.
What plants are you planning to use to make a herbarium? Leave your message at
Making a herbarium
Neither verbal descriptions, nor drawings, nor botanical guides can give such a complete picture of flora as a direct study of it. But if you pick a plant and bring it into the room, it will quickly wither. But the plant can be preserved for a long time. To do this, you need to dry it by placing it between sheets of paper. Botany lovers have a whole collection of such dried plants. In order for the collection to last longer and for it to be convenient to use, it must be well and correctly designed and provided with labels. This collection is called herbarium.
For over 200 years, scientists, travelers and botanists who studied the plant cover of our country collected herbariums. These herbariums are carefully stored in various botanical scientific institutions, the largest of which in our country is the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. The most complete herbarium of flora is concentrated there Soviet Union(over 5 million herbarium sheets). The herbarium of Moscow University contains 700 thousand herbarium sheets. Many cities and local history museums have herbariums of local flora collected by amateur botanists and local historians. In higher and secondary educational institutions, the herbarium is used as visual aid in botany lessons. These herbariums are usually compiled by students.
Many people think that collecting plants and compiling a herbarium is a very simple matter. It's really not difficult. However, for a collection to have scientific or educational value, a number of rules must be followed. First of all, you need to correctly collect the plants, write down their living conditions and location; then identify the plants, i.e. find their scientific names; Finally, the plants must be skillfully dried and prepared into herbarium specimens. For all this, you need a manual for identifying plants and simple equipment that anyone can do themselves.
To collect and dry plants, you should stock up on blotting (filter) or newspaper (the format of central newspapers) paper, which absorbs and releases moisture well. From half-sheets of newspaper folded in half, prepare drying shirts. Plants are placed in them. Whole newspapers, folded in four, serve as interchangeable pads between the “shirts” with plants. To collect fruits and seeds prepare bags, or capsules, from writing paper. For labels, cut a pack of labels into 1/8 of a sheet from the same paper or use a small notepad. It is also necessary to prepare a sufficient amount of dense, preferably special herbarium paper, carefully cut it into sheets of a generally accepted format: width - from 28 to 30 cm, length - 42-45 cm. The herbarium will be mounted on these sheets. You also need good clean glue (gum arabic, photo glue).
A morphological herbarium showing how different the shape of inflorescences can be.
Plants intended for herbarization are collected entirely, that is, with all above-ground and underground organs - roots, rhizomes, tubers, bulbs, which are removed from the soil with an iron scoop or botanical digger. It can be replaced by a strong kitchen knife or a wide chisel. For longitudinal cutting of thick rhizomes (so that they dry out faster), as well as for cutting (do not break off) branches from trees and shrubs, use a garden or pocket knife. Aquatic plants are caught from the water with a small hook or a “cat” (an anchor or a large fishing rod with a sinker on a long cord). They can also tilt or pull up a branch. tall tree. For drying “shirts” and plants collected in the field, it is necessary excursion folder. It consists of two plates of cardboard or plywood with slots near the corners - a wide braid is threaded through them to tie a folder and carry it over the shoulder.
Plants are dried in botanical press. It consists of two wooden frames same size(30X45 cm or 35X50 cm, i.e. slightly larger than a herbarium sheet), on which metal mesh is stretched. To tighten the press, use a strong cord or two belts. The press can also be made from two sheets of plywood, drilling many holes in them for ventilation. If you cut slits in the corners of plywood sheets and thread tape through them, you will get a combined folder-press suitable for both collecting and drying plants.
Plants for the herbarium are collected only when dry, clear weather. Plants wetted by rain or dew take a long time to dry and may deteriorate. This condition also applies to plants that are dried in sand (see below).
From left to right: botanical digger and scoop, excursion folder made of cardboard or plywood for collecting plants, press for drying plants (dimensions are given in centimeters).
Not every plant is suitable for a herbarium. Specimens should be selected that are fully developed, without any damage, with blossoming flowers and, if possible, with fruits, even if unripe (without fruits, some plants are very difficult to identify). Branches with leaves are cut off from trees and shrubs so that you can see not only the shape, but also the location of the leaves. For the herbarium you need their flowers and fruits, and for conifers - cones. Dioecious plants should be represented in the herbarium by male and female specimens, and monoecious plants by specimens with pistillate and staminate flowers. From large herbaceous plants that do not fit entirely on a herbarium sheet, parts are taken from which one can easily get an idea of the whole plant.
Once the plant is removed from the soil, it is thoroughly cleaned of soil adhering to the roots and immediately placed in a drying “jacket.” All plant organs are first straightened. If some leaves lie on top of each other, layers of drying paper are placed between them so that the leaves do not turn black during the drying process. One or two leaves should be bent so that the lower surface of the leaf blade is visible. Under large and delicate flowers useful to put thin layer absorbent cotton wool. Tall plants with narrow leaves, such as cereals, are bent and placed in a “shirt” in a zigzag. Whenever bending, the plant must be placed so that the root faces down and the end of the stem faces up.
For herbarization, it is recommended to take at least three copies of each botanical species. Of these, one is intended for dissection (dividing into parts) during identification, the second is for mounting on a herbarium sheet, and the third is a spare one.
For each plant, right there in the field, a rough label, which is put into the “shirt” with it and is not subsequently separated from it. The labels are numbered sequentially, with the label number replacing the plant name until it is identified. Left in the label free place for Russian and Latin botanical names of species and family. If the herbarium is intended for a local history museum, then the local folk name of the plant is also recorded. Next, the features of the habitat of the taken plant are noted, i.e. the environment in which this species grows: terrain, soil properties, degree of moisture, lighting conditions, nature of distribution, etc. The geographical point where the plant was taken is also indicated. Finally, the date the plant was picked is recorded. The label is signed by the one who found the plant for the herbarium, and then by the one who identified it. If the plant is accompanied by a bag of fruits or seeds collected at another time, then this date is also marked on it.
To establish the exact scientific name of a plant species and its belonging to a particular family, plant identification keys are used. At the end of the collection, all “shirts” with plants must be transferred (without turning them over!) from the folder to the press frame. In this case, 2-3 pads made of the same newsprint are placed between the “shirts” to absorb moisture. The “shirts” are laid out on the frame so that the thick parts of the plants are positioned alternately in one direction or the other, then the stack of “shirts” will be smooth, without humps. Having covered the pack with a second frame, tighten the press tightly with crosswise straps or a cord in 2 loops. In this form, the press is hung or leaned against a wall somewhere in the sun and wind. At least once a day, wet pads are replaced with dry ones. The “shirts” do not change, and the plants are not removed from them. In damp weather, the press is usually placed near a warm stove or radiator. central heating, placing it on its edge. To speed up drying, they also use a hot iron, carefully ironing the plant through paper or gauze. With these methods, plants dry out faster and retain their natural color better.
Drying on cotton mats is used for those plants that turn black during slower drying, for example, plants from the orchid family, some willows, etc. The blue and blue color of the corollas, for example, in bluebells and blue cornflower, is better preserved if When planting these plants in a press, place thin cotton pads under the inflorescences.
The plant can be considered dry and suitable for mounting if, when lifted by the root collar, it does not bend and retains the shape acquired in the press. Only one species is mounted on one herbarium sheet - in one or several copies. The plant is placed on a herbarium sheet so that its parts do not protrude beyond the edges, and is attached in different places with narrow (3-4 mm wide) strips of paper. Glue is applied to the ends of the strip and the corners of the label. Thick parts of plants, such as rhizomes, can be attached to the leaf with threads. To prevent the threads from being visible, they are painted green with watercolors or ink. Plants cannot be glued to paper. A bag or capsule with fruits or seeds is glued to the lower left corner of the herbarium sheet. The lower right corner of the sheet is reserved for the label, rewritten completely in ink, or best of all, in ink. The seed packet and label are glued slightly away from the edges of the sheet. A clean herbarium label looks like this:
Herbarium sheet with dried plant, label and seed packet.
When dried in a press, the plant loses its three-dimensional shape, and the natural arrangement of its parts in space is disrupted. Therefore, if it is necessary to preserve the volume of a plant or flower during drying, they resort to another method - drying it in sand. For this you need a small, even river sand. It must be completely clean, free from clay and organic residues. This is achieved by washing the sand in water until the turbidity completely disappears. The sand is then dried and calcined on a hot plate in iron pans until the emission of smoke and odor ceases. Sand prepared in this way is stored in a closed container.
Major families of flowering plants. Ranunculaceae: 1 - oak anemone, a - flower, b - fruits; 2 - European swimsuit; 3 - larkspur, and - cross-section of a flower. Moths: 4 - red clover, a - flower, b - part of the root; 5 - meadow rank. Umbelliferae: 6 - carrot, a - flower, b - fruit. Cruciferous: 7 - cabbage, a - fruit-pod; 8 - field lily, and - fruit. Rosaceae: 9 - brown rosehip, a - false fruit; 10 - common pear, and - cross-section of a flower.
Large flowers, inflorescences, branches with fruits, shoots and small plants, such as sundews, are most often dried in sand. The easiest way is to dry the plant in a cone-shaped “fountain” made of thick paper. The sharp top of such a cone is bent and secured with a paperclip to prevent sand from spilling out. The flower is placed in a “pound” and carefully covered with sand from a spoon or scoop. Cones with plants embedded in sand are placed in a special rack or hung on nails. The drying place should be warm and well ventilated. The duration of drying plants in sand varies. It depends on the plant (thin or fleshy leaves and stems) and on the air condition (temperature, humidity, wind). The ability to determine the time required to dry different plants is acquired through practice.
Compositae: 11 - perennial aster; 12 - blue cornflower, a - basket, b - funnel-shaped flower; 13 - common tansy; 14 - common chicory, a - root. Liliaceae: 15 - May lily of the valley, a - fruits, b - part of the rhizome; 16 - yellow goose onion. Lamiaceae: 17 - meadow sage; 18 - peppermint. Solanaceae: 19 - potato, a - flower, b - cross-section of the fruit. Cereals: 20 - timothy (sultan); 21 - rye (ear); 22 - corn, o - cob; 23 - annual bluegrass, and - flower.
Plants dried in sand, especially flowers, become very fragile and must be removed from the sand very carefully. You cannot pour sand from the cone over the edge - the plant or flower can be broken. It is better to release sand in a thin stream from a hole made with an awl or nail at the bottom of the cone. Dried plants should be stored in closed boxes or under a glass cover in the dark. They fade quickly in the light.
When the plant dries out, it loses its natural color. First of all, the red and blue color of the flowers fades; the yellow color lasts longer. During long-term storage, the color of the leaves and stems changes. From green it becomes brownish-brown. What to do in this case? Watercolors come to the rescue. You need to choose the appropriate tone and paint the petals and green parts of the dry plant with a thin brush, restoring the natural color. If the paint does not stick to the waxy coating that sometimes covers the surface of plants, then a thin layer of heated gelatin is first applied to it with a brush.
Why is a herbarium needed?
The word "herbarium" originally referred to a book about medicinal plants. Tournefort (c. 1700) used the term to refer to a collection of dried plants; it was adopted by Linnaeus and, under his influence, replaced the earlier term "hortus siccus" with "herbarium". Nowadays, a herbarium refers to both a collection of dried (or otherwise fixed) plants and the institution in which it is stored.
When creating a herbarium, it solves the following problems:
· stores reference material;
· provides samples for determination comparative method;
· Serves as a standard for correct scientific names.
Depending on the tasks and capabilities, as well as the nature of the work being carried out, herbaria can be distinguished as general, regional, local, and special. General herbaria can be very large. The largest herbarium in our country and one of the largest in the world is stored at the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarov in St. Petersburg. It contains more than 5 million leaves of plants found throughout Russia and neighboring countries. The herbarium of K. Linnaeus and the Kew Botanical Gardens in London has 6.5 million specimens.
But there are also small herbariums that study the flora of a certain region or region. Every higher educational institution, where biologists, ecologists, etc. are trained. usually has its own herbarium collections that meet certain requirements. Educational herbaria are classified as special herbaria. They can be located not only in universities, but also in schools and colleges. Such collections should contain specimens to illustrate the morphological structures of plants, representatives of economically important and cultivated plants, grown in a given locality, specimens to illustrate the characters of the main families and genera.
Observing plants in nature, collecting them and compiling a herbarium is a fruitful and exciting way to get to know the world of plants. No, even a beautifully executed drawing, much less an oral description, can replace natural plant, dried on a herbarium sheet. Not every plucked and dried plant can be called a herbarium specimen - a herbarium, i.e. a collection of “specially collected and dried plants that have undergone scientific processing (definition, classification, etc.).”
Without herbarium collections, plant taxonomy is impossible.
The work of creating a herbarium is very labor-intensive, but excitingly interesting. WE WISH YOU SUCCESS!
How to properly collect plants for a herbarium?
To collect plants and compile a herbarium, the following equipment is required:
1. Herbarium folder for transporting collected plants and a supply of paper, consisting of two sheets of thick cardboard or plywood measuring 45x35 cm with two ribbons threaded into the slits for tightening. Lately It became a practice to collect plants for the herbarium in large bags. This allows them to be brought to the base fresher, which makes subsequent loading into the press easier.
2. A supply of paper for drying plants, if possible not glued, porous (filter paper, newspaper).
3. Tools for digging and cutting plants.
4. Labels.
5. Herbarium press, consisting of two metal or wooden frames covered with mesh.
When collecting plants for a herbarium, a number of rules must be followed:
1. Plants for the herbarium are collected in dry weather, because After rain or dew, plants dry poorly and may turn black.
2. For the herbarium, take healthy, undamaged plants, with all above-ground and underground organs. This is due to the peculiarities of identifying plants by morphological characteristics.
3. Herbaceous plants, exceeding the size of the folder, bend 2-3 times. From very large plants, take the upper part with flowers and leaves, the middle part with leaves and the lower part with basal leaves. Shoots with leaves, flowers and fruits (if any) are cut from trees and shrubs.
4. Plants of the same type are placed in the shirt. Large plants take 1-2 copies, small ones - up to 10 or more (to fill the sheet).
5. Plants are dug up and freed from soil. Thick stems, rhizomes and roots are cut in half lengthwise.
6. To place the plant, the folder must be placed on a flat surface.
7. When placing it in a folder, the plant must be straightened and given the shape in which it will later be mounted. Do not tear off anything, especially the lower leaves. If the plant has a lot of leaves that overlap each other, you need to remove some of the leaves, while preserving the petioles, so that you can have an idea of the true leaf arrangement. When preparing the plant for installation, some of the leaves are unrolled bottom side so that the nature of pubescence or other features can be examined. The same is done with part of the flowers (inflorescences).
8. A draft label is inserted into the shirt with the plant, which indicates:
1. name of the plant (if the plant is unknown, then it can be assigned a number or given a conventional name);
2. the place where the plant was collected (region, district, nearest settlement);
3. plant habitat (meadow, forest, steppe, etc.);
4. date of collection;
5. by whom the plant was collected and identified;
6. in which communities and how often this type meets.
It is necessary to know which species are protected and not to dig them up unless absolutely necessary. One gets acquainted with such plants at the place where they grow.
In addition, the annual mass collection of plants in one area entails a reduction in their numbers and can cause significant harm to the state of the local flora. To avoid this, you can collect part perennial plants without underground parts, cutting off only above-ground shoots.
How to dry plants?
The collected plants must be placed in a herbarium press for drying. To do this, they are taken out of the folder along with the sheet on which they are placed (the shirt) and transferred to the press, interspersed with additional sheets of paper - spacers. In this case, the plants are well straightened so that the individual parts do not overlap each other. If this is not possible, paper is placed between the overlapping organs.
Plants should not protrude beyond the paper. A label must be included with the plant.
To speed up the drying of very succulent plants (for example, orchids), they are scalded with boiling water without immersing the flowers in water. U bulbous plants cut the onion lengthwise, which is also scalded.
A stack consisting of herbarium shirts (sheets with plants) and pads is placed between the halves of the press and tightened tightly. Up to 50 sheets of plants can be placed in one press.
The press is dried in the sun, making sure to bring it indoors at night. Wet pads are replaced with dry ones daily (for aquatic plants- 2 times a day).
A properly dried plant becomes fragile, its leaves and flowers do not sag. When applied to the lips, it does not cause a feeling of cold.
How to properly install a herbarium?
A plant mounted on a herbarium sheet should make it possible to study it to get a true idea of its morphology. In this regard, when designing a herbarium, it is necessary to adhere to a number of rules and requirements:
1. Plants dried in botanical presses are mounted on a herbarium sheet made of thin white cardboard or thick white paper measuring 42x28 cm (A3 format). One or more are placed on one herbarium sheet (in the case of small sizes) specimens of plants of the same species.
2. On the right bottom corner a label is attached to the herbarium sheet. Its size is usually 10x8 cm. Entries on the label are made in black ink, legible handwriting. Information is transferred to it from the draft label. A herbarium without a label has no value!
3. For installation, the most successful specimens are selected, with flowers and fruits that do not have damaged organs (if this is not a herbarium of damage).
4. The plant is placed on a leaf so that the underground organs are directed downward. If the specimen is large, it can be broken in several places and secured in this form.
5. Plants are sewn on with white or green threads. First, the underground organs are secured, then the stem, leaf petioles, inflorescence axis, and pedicels.
6. C bottom side the herbarium sheet should not have wide stitches, the knots are tied tightly with front side on the plant.
7. After this, the herbarium sheet is picked up and slightly bent or turned over with the plant down. The parts of the plant lagging behind the sheet of paper are glued using paper “straws” (stripes of tracing paper 1.5 - 2 mm wide).
8. If necessary, the inflorescence or flower is “dressed” in an envelope made of tracing paper. The fruits can be placed in a special envelope, which is glued to the same sheet.
ATTENTION:
·When mounting the herbarium, use PVA glue or starch paste.
·Ink for filling labels must be waterproof.
How to store a herbarium?
Dried plants are very hygroscopic and quickly deteriorate due to dampness. Herbarium specimens should be stored in a dry, bright and ventilated room, placing folders with them in tightly closed cabinets. The selection of herbarium sheets in folders can be thematic (herbarium of cultivated plants, herbarium of weeds, etc.) or systematic. A systematic herbarium of families is placed in alphabetical order or according to any accepted taxonomic system.
As the collection increases, it is necessary to maintain a catalog where all information about the plants being collected is noted. The catalog can be on paper or in electronic form.
Herbariums often suffer from insects. There are many ways to combat them: treating collections with various insecticides, deep freezing, heating, etc. All of them require some preparation and certain conditions.
Exploring wildlife is incredible interesting activity. How beautiful, rich and diverse it is! There are countless known plants: trees, shrubs, herbs and flowers. Some of them are medicinal, while others, on the contrary, are aggressive and poisonous.
Of course, more colorful books, magazines, and publications with large, bright photographs of certain plants have been published. But it’s more interesting to look at the leaf itself than even the leaf itself. high quality photo. But not all plants can be grown at home, and it will not be possible to keep the leaves alive for a long time. However, there is a great way to create your own “green collection” - a herbarium.
What is a herbarium?
What is the meaning of the word herbarium? This is a collection of dried plants. It can include not only leaves, but also flowers, tree bark, stems and generally any parts of the plant. There is another meaning of this word. This is the name of the whole building, which is a repository for herbal collections.
The origin of the word herbarium (herbarium) is Latin, it is a derivative of herba - grass. The very first herbal collection appeared in Italy back in the 16th century. The name of the first “herbarist” was Luca Ghini.
The value of herbariums is great: they can be stored for a very long time, preserving the “biological picture” of the area for posterity. This is, of course, in a global sense. And if we talk about a child who makes a herbarium, for example, for school, then he:
- get an idea of the diversity of plants in your city (locality);
- learn to recognize plants, distinguish useful herbs from poisonous;
- When compiling a collection, he will gain skills in collecting and drying plants, and designing a catalogue.
When and how to collect materials?
The first question that a person who decides to collect a herbarium faces is how to make preparations for it, what to collect and when.
Firstly, there are several general rules, relevant regardless of what the herbarium will be made of: leaves of trees, herbs, or whether flowers will be dried in the herbarium:
- It is important to collect plants in dry weather, when there has been no rain for a couple of days, otherwise it will be difficult to dry the leaves;
- Branches cannot be broken; they must be cut with a knife;
- A proper herbarium includes those parts of plants by which the latter can be recognized (it is best not only flowers or leaves, but several elements at once);
- You need to choose healthy, living plants that have not dried out from the heat;
- When compiling a herbarium, it is worth taking several copies of plants (you never know - the foxes will be torn, lost, damaged during processing or design).
Of course, these are not all the rules for assembling a real herbarium, but for such a task as making a herbarium for school, this will be quite enough.
Be sure to write down where, when, and at what time of year each exhibit was collected.
How to dry the material?
When figuring out how to make a herbarium from leaves, you need to become familiar with drying technology. There are several options, but the best one is in this case will be as follows: place a copy between two sheets of paper, additionally separate such “envelopes” with paper, place them under a press in a ventilated place (on a windowsill). How to make a herbarium from flowers? Exists special method- drying in sand. It is necessary to wash the river or sea sand clean, place the exhibits on a sheet of paper or in a box with a flat bottom and fill them up. In this case, the petals will not be damaged.
The simplest solution to the drying issue is to put the material in a book. However, in this case, both the plants and the book may be damaged. Therefore, if you are puzzled by how to make a herbarium correctly, such drying is not recommended.
“Ready” are leaves or flowers that do not bend when lifted by the stem.
Great, the material is ready! How to beautifully design a herbarium?
Herbarium design
If you start making a herbarium with your own hands, then be prepared for labor-intensive work. Dried plants are very fragile and easy to crumble, so you need to act carefully.
There are several options for how to design a herbarium. The first is to put the exhibits in a photo album with sticky pages. In such books, usually from each sheet you can separate the film, under which (on a sticky base) the photographs are laid out. In our case, these will be parts of the plant. The second is to put the leaves on thick paper (you can buy special herbarium paper), gluing them in the middle with double-sided tape or glue. With this design, the collection will be more susceptible to spoiling factors.
You can buy a herbarium today. This does not mean at all that you will purchase a ready-made collection. There are special kits that contain everything necessary for collecting a herbarium - a press for drying, glue, herbarium paper, paints and a brush for designing the work.
Regardless of which method is chosen, some form of label with the date and location of the plant's collection must be added to each page. An excellent addition would be photographs of the specimen from where it was obtained, or of the whole plant. It would be interesting to attach a short note about a representative of nature - where it lives, when it blooms, whether it is useful or harmful to humans.
Compiling a herbarium is a very exciting process. Firstly, it helps to remember what plants look like, and much more better than any books. Secondly, it teaches you to be careful and attentive to details. And, of course, the design of the collection itself is a very creative process.
Good day, my dear readers. We are together again, and it makes me incredibly happy!
Autumn time has colored bright colors trees, and now it really is “... a forest, like a painted tower, purple, gold, crimson.” How I want to preserve this multi-colored splendor not only in memory and in photographs. What can you do to bring a piece of nature into your home and admire it throughout the long winter? Today we will talk about how to properly collect a herbarium. You still have time to start your botanical collection!
Lesson plan:
Why are dry plants needed?
The familiar word “herbarium” is translated from Latin as “grass,” and there is nothing complicated about it. Unlike the usual collection of leaves in the park near our home, the herbarium collections of true botany lovers are collected from dried herbs, flowers, and even medicinal plants.
Did you know that this is a very important matter, the results of which are registered in an international database? It turns out that today there are more than 3,300 herbarium specimens from 168 countries around the world! This is the titanic work of more than 10,000 botanists!
But we are used to it: we went, collected the blades of grass that we liked, dried them at home and loudly called them “herbarium”.
Our goal is not necessarily to be included in this worldwide list of nature lovers (although sometimes it seems, and why not?), but to touch the beautiful and figure out how to properly collect a collection of plants and dry it, so that later we can use it in technology lessons at school let's try.
Many people ask the question: why are these dead woods needed at all? Just imagine that this is not only a visual material for lessons about nature, but first of all a building component for creative work!
Having mastered the art of creating a plant collection, you can create incomparable compositions. It could be wall panel or a painting, photo album or bookmark, postcard or autumn souvenir as a gift.
This is interesting! Drying plants and labeling still specimens was invented by the Italian physician and founder of the Pisa Botanical Garden, Luca Ghini, back in the 16th century. But the rules for collecting plants for a herbarium belong to the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus.
If you believe the sources, then in Russia the first person to create a herbarium specimen called “Rvan 1717” was Peter I.
What and how do we collect for a home herbarium?
Of course, I will completely agree with you: we take everything that attracts with its beauty and attracts the eye. Only the experts in this business, who with their own hands annually improve the procedure for assembling a collection of plants, give some simple tips so that the herbal splendor is preserved in its original form.
Putting together what will become a collection is a troublesome task, but it is by no means tricky. But how to dry it? So, we take the whole harvest home and decide which method is suitable - the old fashioned way, in books, or the modern way, using “nanotechnology”.
Drying, shaking, or how to prepare a herbarium?
There are a few different ways dry plants and flowers at home, but for each of them there are general rules.
- The herbarium specimen is immediately given the desired shape, since it can subsequently be unfolded in in the right direction or folding it several times will no longer work - it will break, and all your work will be in vain.
- Stems, leaves, root system laid out as if the grass lived in its natural environment, but at the same time, so that all the components can be seen in detail.
- The flowers need to be straightened and flattened so that their calyx looks up, revealing all the beauty of the inflorescence in detail.
- Drying time is at least two weeks. This time is enough to ensure that the objects transferred to the collection do not become moldy due to the moisture remaining in them.
Drying in books
To do this, we choose heavier sources of information, and even those that we don’t mind, since traces of the herbarium friends drying there will certainly remain on the pages. You can line the pages with paper napkins, but not at all so as not to stain the sheets, but so that they absorb excess moisture.
Having distributed the copies throughout the book, we place this plant keeper under a press to press it securely on top. Every two to three days, change the paper napkins, if they were used to line the pages, or the book in which the plants are dried. This will quickly rid the herbarium of internal moisture and will not give rise to mold.
The one for whom the book is best friend, and he is not at all ready to spoil it; instead of book pages, he can successfully use glass, which is also lined with paper, and the same press is placed on the glass stack.
Iron dry
A good way is when a child comes home from school and declares that a herbarium is needed “yesterday.” In order to adequately dry plants with an ironing machine, you need to remember that the temperature of the iron should not be too high, so that the herbarium does not turn into burnt ruins.
Before ironing, the flowers are placed inside newspaper or between sheets of paper and the procedure is repeated several times, interrupted “to rest.”
Dry under pressure
An excellent way to dry plants with ventilation. A press is made for it from two wooden frames, inside of which nets are stretched. It is between these grids that the herbarium specimens are placed.
Dry in the microwave
Why not use modern household appliances? Chipboard sheet tear with absorbent paper on which the flowers are placed, cover with a second paper sheet and the second chipboard. We tie the sides of the resulting folder with rubber bands and place this structure on average temperature in the microwave for a couple of minutes.
Some additionally use ceramic tiles to protect the paper from burning externally.
Creative stores sell ready-made presses for drying plants in microwaves and ovens, so if you intend to take the creation of a herbarium seriously, then maybe it’s worth moving away from artisanal methods and spending a little money.
Drying in the sand
River sand is well suited to perfectly dry voluminous buds. To do this, put a flower in a box and fill it up, filling the gaps between the petals. The flower lives in such conditions for one to two weeks. Interesting way, just below you will find a video with details.
You can prepare a voluminous plant for a herbarium by hanging it upside down, and placing mosses and lichens on metal mesh in dry and dark places.
This is interesting! Save Blue colour Denatured alcohol helps if you place a flower there for 50 seconds. But PVA glue diluted 1:4 with water makes the plant more dense. Before drying, dip the flower in this solution. If you want to get an elastic leaf, place it for several days in a glycerin solution diluted with water 3:1. Just keep in mind that it will turn brown and you will have to paint it!
Are you already going to the park? I'm with you! We will share collections!
Until next time.
Always yours, Evgenia Klimkovich.