Practical Preparation of Herbarium

Botanical collections are essential to our understanding of British
Columbia’s flora and plant communities. A good-quality herbarium
reference collection provides the following:
· a tool for plant identification;
· a data source for research on the taxonomy and distribution of plant
groups and for writing handbooks and floras;
· an historical record of plant locations, and of a collector’s contribution to
the science of botany;
· a repository for voucher specimens related to published scientific reports;
· an educational resource for learning to recognize the plant species of an
area; and
· accurate and permanent documentation of botanical information that
adds credibility to data collected in vegetation surveys.
This manual lists equipment and describes techniques and procedures
for collecting, preserving, processing, and storing plant specimens.
Bryophytes (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) and lichens require
different collection and preservation techniques, and are treated separately
from vascular plants (seed plants, ferns, clubmosses and horsetails) in this
report. In the appendices you will find information to assist you in
obtaining supplies, contacting herbaria, or locating reference texts for
British Columbia flora.

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