Plant Identification
Collecting and Identifying Herbarium Specimens
Typically, plant specimens are dried by placing them between sheets of paper and these in turn are placed between pieces of cardboard. The resulting stack of plants, paper and cardboard is then placed into a press to keep them flat. Pressure is maintained for usually a period of several days to a week until the plants are dry. To avoid fungal damage damp paper is often replaced with dry every day or two.
Newspaper is ideal for drying specimens, a tabloid sheet folded in half being a good size.
Artificial drying of specimens is common practice in herbaria where often specially constructed drying cupboards, with fan-forced heated air, are used for that purpose. Specimens are dried over a period of several days, with temperatures deliberately kept at about 50-55 degrees C, as higher temperatures and rapid drying results in brittle specimens.
Field-driers employing heat from gas burners are frequently used by professional collectors. In dry areas specimens are readily dried by having the presses (tightly tied!) on roof racks of moving vehicles.
All professional collectors have field note books in which information concerning the specimens gathered is recorded. Basic facts such as locality, habitat and flower colour, that is, data that may not be apparent once the specimens are dried, are noted. Today, it is common to see latitudes and longitudes determined by use of a Global Positioning System, a far cry from many early collections which may be labelled with no more than a note stating the country of origin. Each specimen is also usually given its own number as this facilitates reference to collections, for example when specimens are sent to a taxonomist for naming.
P S Short
May 2002
- Northern Territory plant checklist (pdf 309Kb)
- Collecting and identifying plant specimens (pdf 72Kb)
- Plant taxonomic terms (pdf 142Kb)
- Taxonomic pictorial glossary
- Naturalised flora checklist (pdf76 Kb)
Useful literature for NT flora identification
- Flora of the Darwin Region Vol.2, Dunlop et.al.
- Flood Plain Flora, Cowie et.al.
- Field Key for the Monsoon Rainforest Flora of the Darwin Region, Booth et.al.
- Weeds of the Wet/Dry Tropics of Australia, Nicholas M. Smith
- Native Plants of Northern Australia, John Brock
- Flora of the Kimberely Region, Wheeler (ed.) et.al.
- Flora of Central Australia, John Jessop (ed.)
- Plant Species and Sites of botanical significance (please contact the Herbarium for a pdf copy of this document)
