Types of herbarium. Collecting a herbarium of autumn leaves

A herbarium is usually made for one of two purposes. One of them is scientific and educational. She is haunted by botanists and schoolchildren doing homework on the relevant subject. The second is decorative, because dried leaves and flowers can be used to make beautiful panels, postcards, bookmarks and other items. You can also dry a plant “as a keepsake,” although this desire is less likely to become the reason for creating a herbarium. How to make a herbarium primarily depends on the purpose for which it is collected and designed, although the basic recommendations will be the same, regardless of the reason.

How to collect plants for a herbarium

Herbarium of leaves

It is important collection time flowers and leaves for herbarium. This is usually done in the afternoon, no earlier than 11 o’clock. By this time, there is no dew left on the plants. Dew increases the humidity of plants, which causes them to dry out longer and may even rot. For the same reason, it is not recommended to collect plants for a herbarium after rain. In other words, it should be at least 12 hours after the rain, or better yet, even more. Weather on the day of plant collection, it is optimal to be warm and sunny, when the temperature is between 20-25 degrees.

Which plants to choose for a herbarium, depends on the purpose of its creation. If it is scientific and educational, then it is best to choose the most typical samples. That is, it is better to give preference to leaves and flowers of medium size and regular shape. If some of the leaves of the plant have dried out, then you should not tear them off in this case, so as not to disturb appearance. If the herbarium is made with decorative purpose, for example, for children's creativity, then leaves and flowers of bizarre shape, on the contrary, should attract your attention first of all - you should give preference to these. In any case, leaves and flowers need to be intact. It is necessary to take several samples of them in order to, if necessary, replace a specimen damaged during drying.

Twigs for the herbarium are cut with sharp pruners, medicinal and other small plants, herbs are carefully dug out of the ground, trying not to damage the root.

Going for plants, flowers and leaves to make a herbarium from them, need to take with you a large book, sheets of appropriate format and paper clips. The collected copies should be immediately placed between the sheets of a book or album, lined with white paper and fastened. This should be done so as not to damage the plants before they are brought home and subjected to further processing.

Not only children's applications can be made from dried leaves and flowers. Modern direction in handmade - “scrapbooking” reveals how to make a beautiful greeting card with your own hands, or decorate a photo album using dry plants. With proper skill, you can learn how to dry voluminous flowers to create collages and bouquets.

There is fast drying of the herbarium, and slow.

You can quickly dry the herbarium using an iron. How faster plant dry, the more likely it is to retain its color. After all, it’s not uncommon that after drying for a long time, you can notice that the colors have faded and ugly brown spots appear on the leaves that weren’t there before.

For the herbarium, you need to select even plants, without rot. If necessary, rinse them under water, shake off any droplets, and place them on a towel.

The surface should be moderately hard. Straighten the plant, cover it with a sheet of paper, and start stroking it with a burning iron. There is no need to press hard, otherwise the drying leaf may break.

Press drying

Sort the plants by thickness. Do not dry delicate fern leaves together with thick branches. Plants must be uniform.

Place the leaves between sheets of old newspaper and press down on top with a press. The press can serve large encyclopedias, or any other heavy books. Approximately once every 2-3 days, go through the herbarium for ventilation and revision, maybe something has already dried out and the leaves can be put into an album.

Drying flowers

For volumetric drying of flowers, special meshes are used, on which the flower heads are located, and the petals are dried as needed.

Small flowers can be dried by hanging them in small bouquets with flowers facing down.

Literally, “herbarium” is translated from Latin as “grass.” Dried plants are used as visual aids in botany lessons, for making crafts and panels. There are also scientific herbarium collections. They are kept in museums and botanical gardens. In dry rooms, the contents of albums retain their color and shape for centuries without loss.

Rules for collecting plants for herbarium

Before going for herbs, decide what kind of herbarium you will make: for school, thematic, decorative. This will determine what herbs, flowers and leaves will be needed.

To collect plants you will need a spatula, a knife, a herbarium folder, paper sheets for laying out and recording data, and a pen.

How to choose suitable specimens

Collect herbs on warm, dry days. You should not do this in the morning and evening - dew will interfere with quality drying. Cut or dig up two or three specimens of one species in order to select later the best option. Healthy specimens not damaged by insects are suitable. It’s good if they have both flowers and fruits. You cannot collect plants from the Red Book.

For decorative purposes, young plants should be taken; they will not lose color during processing. But sometimes faded flowers are also used to make the composition picturesque.

It is easier to create a herbarium from leaves than from flowers. It is enough to clean them with a damp flannel rag from dirt and straighten them. The leaves of plants with a silvery underside look great: coltsfoot, elecampane, poplar, as well as branches of ferns. Before drying, autumn leaves for herbarium are soaked in denatured alcohol or silicate gel to preserve brightness. Ideal flowers include violets, lavender, pansies, calendula, cornflowers, delphinium and yarrow.

Plants are either dug up by the roots or cut at an angle. The voluminous inflorescences are separated, and the thick rhizomes are cut lengthwise. When placed between paper sheets, the petals are straightened and the long stems are bent. Some of the leaves are turned inside out. Each specimen is marked, noting where and when it was picked. This rough label is used for the final description of the herbarium.

If you do not have time to process the raw materials, place the plants in water until next day or wrap it in plastic and place it in the bottom compartment of the refrigerator.

Preparing flowers for drying

It is more difficult to make a herbarium from flowers than from herbs and leaves. But if you know the nuances, the flower album will remind you of the sweet days of summer for a long time:

• To preserve the shade, blue flowers are placed in denatured alcohol for 30 seconds before drying.
• For luxurious dahlias, roses, asters, peonies and chrysanthemums, some of the petals are dried separately, otherwise they will fall off. They are placed under a load weighing 7 kg. And the rest are laid with cotton pads so as not to stick together.
• Tulips are dried either individual petals or whole. But they need to be laid under pressure slightly wilted. The same goes for rose buds.
• The juicy stems of crocuses, daffodils and tulips are cut lengthwise and the core is removed.
• The inflorescences of chamomile, marigolds, and gerberas are covered with cotton wool on all sides and placed in a “shirt” made of several layers of soft paper, and then under a 15 kg press.
• Small flowers (jasmine, marigolds, forget-me-nots, yarrow) are dried together with a twig, first lined with paper, then with cardboard. The required load is at least 15 kg.

Enthusiasts manage to dry the heads of ripe dandelions and other fluffy flowers for decorative purposes.

To do this, thread a wire through the stems and lower the flower head into boiling water for ten seconds.

Methods of pressing raw materials

Drying technology has been expanded modern techniques, but the classic ones are still used. How to make a herbarium is chosen by the future owner of the collection:

You can only dry leaves and herbs with an iron, and even then they may slightly change color. This method is not used for flowers other than cornflowers.

How to install a herbarium?

Dried flowers are mounted on separate paper sheets or in an album for a herbarium. In the latter case, a careful approach is required: when turned over, the fragile petals may fall off. Between the pages of the album there should be inserts made of tracing paper to prevent abrasion on a hard surface.

How you can attach dried flowers to paper:

1. With threads. The method is labor-intensive, but worth the time. The threads of the desired shade are almost invisible and provide slight movement to the plant, helping to avoid deformation.
2. Transparent tape or adhesive tape. Low cost and quick method, but short-lived. The tape dries out quickly and the plant moves away from the paper sheet. Regular strips of paper coated with glue will last longer.
3. Glue. Plant parts are glued to cardboard using PVA, paste, or decoupage glue. The disadvantage of the technique is that the adhesives make the sample hard, brittle and brittle. This method is suitable for creating decorative panels for varnishing. Only fish glue provides elastic adhesion, but it is expensive.

In a proper herbarium, specimens are placed with the rhizomes down, thin branches and leaf tips are not fixed.

Protective envelopes made of tracing paper are sometimes put on the inflorescences. And the fruits are glued nearby in a transparent bag.

Creation of a herbarium album and decorative items

The design of the herbarium requires the presence of a label in the lower right corner of the sheet. Its size is usually 10 by 8 cm. It indicates the type and type of sample, time and place of collection. Similar labels are even made on decorative panels.

Using dried flowers for decoration

Do-it-yourself herbarium does not have to be done in classic style. Dried leaves and flowers give room for imagination. From them you can make panels, elements of decoupage, scrapbooking, and applique.

Features of a herbarium for school

A collection of dried flowers for school activities requires a special approach. Botany teachers often give students similar tasks. How to design a schoolchild's herbarium? Attach plants to sheets using any of the above methods. Don't forget about the label.

In the school herbarium title page required. It should indicate the name of the meeting and information about the student who compiled it.

Sheets with samples are placed in transparent files and combined into a folder. Experience in collecting and drying plants is useful for a child: clarity allows you to better remember information.

Children's crafts from dry leaves

Dried flowers are often used for children's creativity. For example, bright autumn leaves become a three-dimensional part of the picture, and the stems are used to create an image on a postcard or bookmark. You can decorate a box, pencil case, or notebook cover with flat petals. Plants are glued to PVA and cover the surface acrylic varnish or glue varnish for decoupage.

Herbarium in the interior

There will be a beautiful herbarium a good gift to a loved one, who is passionate about botany or simply appreciates an elegant retro style in interior design.

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 it's released more quantity colorful books, magazines, publications with large bright photographs of certain plants. 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:

• will 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:

1. 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;
2. Branches cannot be broken; they must be cut with a knife;
3. 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);
4. You need to choose healthy, living plants that have not dried out from the heat;
5. 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? There is a 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 purchase a special herbarium one), 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. Exist special sets, which 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 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.

With the onset of autumn, schoolchildren and their parents often go for a walk in the forest. And not just to enjoy the last warm days. Very often the purpose of such weekends is to collect natural material. After all, children will need to make herbariums from leaves. October is especially good for this, when all the foliage turns bright yellow and red. By properly preserving such a “harvest”, you can then have long winter evenings deal with its design. Or even make paintings or crafts from dried plants with your own hands.

Collection of materials for the herbarium

But first you need to choose the right foliage and flowers for drying. If they have too much moisture, they may become moldy or even rot. Therefore, in order for leaf herbariums to retain a presentable appearance for a long time, you need to know the rules for collecting material.

1. “Hunting” for leaf-flowers should only be done on a dry and sunny day. Drying wet plants is much more difficult.

2. Only whole, undamaged specimens should be selected from fallen leaves. They must be dry.

3. To bring future leaf herbariums home, it is advisable to take files and packages with you. It is better to put each sample in a separate folder; you can supplement it with a note about the place and time of collection.

Preparation of collected material

Now that everything interesting in the forest has been collected, it needs to be dried and preserved. There are several ways to make a herbarium from leaves. They are used depending on what plants were collected and how they are planned to be used. The most popular method is press drying. The sheet is placed between two pieces of tracing paper or paper and then placed in a book or under a small board. Several more very impressive volumes are laid out on top. In 2 weeks, your DIY leaf herbarium will be ready. This technique works best for drying small flowers.

The second method involves drying with an iron. First you need to cover the sheet with paper, and then iron it with a warm iron until completely dry. Compared to the first case, it significantly speeds up preparation, but is completely unsuitable for fragile flowers and thin leaves. Moreover, under the influence high temperature The color of the material may change.

Another way allows you to preserve all the beauty of fresh plants. To do this, leaves or flowers are collected in bunches and hung upside down in a dark, cool place until completely dry. In this way you can dry rose buds, chamomile flowers and other twigs with flowers and fruits.

Herbarium design

When all the leaves and flowers have dried, you can start decorating them. This stage will probably take more than one evening. But then you can admire your work with pleasure. If herbariums of leaves and flowers will be used as a manual for natural history, you can paste each specimen onto a separate sheet and put it in a file. Each such page must be supplemented memorial inscription with the name of the plant, time and place of its collection. All that remains is to collect everything in a folder.

Such plants can also be used to make interesting crafts. By the way, in primary school Children often do this in labor lessons. These can be beautifully designed paintings, illustrations for fairy tales, small models of parks and squares, etc. Such a pastime will perfectly brighten up any winter evening.