Herbarium

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.

He and his students placed freshly gathered plants between two sheets of paper and applied pressure to flatten them and absorb moisture.

[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.

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.

[citation needed] 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.

[3] No matter the method of preservation, detailed information on where and when the plant and fungus was collected, habitat, color (since it may fade over time), and the name of the collector is usually included.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

Most of Carl Linnaeus's collections are housed at the Linnaean Herbarium, which contains over 4,000 types and now belongs to the Linnean Society in England.

[20] Modern scientists continue to develop novel, non-traditional uses for herbarium specimens that extend beyond what the original collectors could have anticipated.

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.

[22] 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.