Preserving Plants: The Herbarium Experience

 Preserving Plants: The Herbarium Experience

The day had been long and full of lush green trees and shrubs, beautiful roads, melodious call of the Whistling Malabar Thrush and jumping langurs in the forest, but it was far from over. The beautiful sunset at ACCC was followed by a session of herbarium making by Dr. R. Ganesan. RG Sir has a gift to find beautiful flowers and leaves and he also taught us how to make them into herbarium to study later. While teaching about the art of herbarium making he shared many stories from the field work across India. The passion and patience with which he explained the process of collection, pressing, drying, labelling and storing it for long-term saving. The simple techniques and equipment involved in herbarium making require skillful binding, labelling in order to have a good end product and beautifully displayed sample. The art of herbarium is one of the key skills to develop not just as a botanist; conservation practitioners need to understand these methods to engage the community more effectively.