HERBARIUM THEIR TECHNIQUE &amp; SIGNIFICANCE @ FEW BOTANICAL GARDENS OF INDIA

Priya Trivedi

The term herbarium, used in the strictest sense today, is simply a collection of dried specimens. Lawrence (1951) and others include in their definitions the arrangement of specimens in the sequence of an accepted classification and are available for reference or other scientific study. "Herbarium" used in its original sense, however, referred not to a collection of plants, but to a book about medicinal plants. Tournefort in about 1700 used the term as an equivalent to hortus siccus (Stearn, 1957), and this use was taken up by Linnaeus who also adopted it as a substitute for hortus siccus, hortus mortus, and others. It was largely through his influence that it superseded the former terms. The procedure of pressing and drying specimens for storage has been an amazingly successful one in terms of preservation of detail and specimen longevity, and the plants so preserved provide a concrete basis for past, present and future studies. In its more than four-hundred-year history the .herbarium has become an institution. Today one associates the term herbarium not only with preserved plant specimens but also with certain botanical activities. The herbarium is the basic reference source of the taxonomist and has become a center for research as well as teaching and public information. An herbarium, a special kind of museum, can also be regarded as a data bank with vast quantities of raw data. Each specimen has information content and therefore value which will, of course, vary depending on completeness of specimen and data and the source of the material. Each specimen has information about the vegetation of an area, a population, and the taxon to which it belongs (Rollins, 1965). The collection, therefore, represents a source of primary information about man's explorations and observations of the earth's vegetation, and document the results of much the past inquiry into the nature and relationships of plants. Herbarium specimens are now used for studies in the disci[plines which were probably never even dreamed of at the time early collections were made and herbaria organized. These studies include such fields as cytogeography, biochemical systematics, palynology, and genecology. II. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT The beginning of the herbarium as a collection of dried specimens affixed to paper for a lasting record is attributed to Luca Ghini (1490?-1556). According to Arber (1938) Ghini seems to have been the sole initiator of the art of herbarium-making and this art was disseminated over Europe by his students. Gherards Cibo, a pupil of Ghini, began collecting and preserving specimens as early as 1532 and his herbarium is extant today. John Falconer, an Englishman, is mentioned as possessing an herbarium in the writings of Lusitanus in 1553 and William Turner in 1569, and it is believed that he also learned of herbarium making either directly or indirectly from Ghini (Arber, 1938). Although the herbarium technique was a well-known botanical practice at the time of Linnaeus, he departed from the convention of the day (mounting specimens and binding them into volumes) by mounting his specimens on single sheets and

Preservation of plant materials is a huge subject. Techniques differ for different groups or habits of plants and is also related to the purpose of preservation. Herbariums are the natural history museums storing and are displaying specially mounted dried and poisoned plant specimens meant for numerous scientific and social benefits. The article discussed the methods of herbarium-sheet preparation starting from plant collection leading to the final storage, maintenance and utilization. Some special techniques like colour preservation in herbarium- specimens and the digitization of herbariums are also discussed with details of some easily applicable methods. Herbaria round the world are recording the planet’s plant diversity and the people of future generations will be enriched about the lost plants of the world as the rate of extinction of species is increasing very fast.

In celebration of The New York Botanical Garden’s 125th anniversary, we present an updated description of the specimen holdings and activities of The William and Lynda Steere Herbarium of The New York Botanical Garden (NY) from 1995 to 2015. During this time, the collection grew to approximately 7.8 million specimens, a new International Plant Sciences Center was built to house the Herbarium and LuEsther T. Mertz Library, many plant families and other taxonomic groups grew in scope and taxonomic comprehensiveness, Southeast Asia developed as a new focus of collecting activities, and the Herbarium emerged as a leader in specimen digitization.

HERBARIUM THEIR TECHNIQUE & SIGNIFICANCE @ FEW BOTANICAL GARDENS OF INDIA Dr. Priya Trivedi M.Sc.(BOTANY), M.Ed., Ph.D. INTRODUCTION A herbarium is a place where plant specimens collected from different places are preserved in pressed & dried condition on sheets with a label which contains different informations. History ➢ The name herbarium was first used by Linnaeus for collection of dried & pressed plants. ➢ Luca Ghini (1490) of Italy has been the initiator of the art of herbarium. ➢ The oldest preserved herbarium specimen is kept in Rome collected by Gherards Cibo. ➢ A student of Luca Ghini in the Year 1539. ➢ In India information about morphology, occurrence & uses of plants are available since vedic era & in several samhita. ➢ In1786, William Roxburgh established a herbarium ➢ In India on the basement of Royal Botanical Garden in Calcutta. ➢ Lawerence Shelter (1969) - Herbaria refers to simply a dried & pressed collection of plant arranged in an accepted system of classification. ➢ Fosberg &Socket (1965) - A modern herbarium is a great filling system in the form of actual specimens of the plants & secondary in the form of published information, pictures & recorded notes. ➢ INTERNATIONAL HERBARIA - With 4 millon sps. ➢ NATIONAL HERBARIA - Covering Country concerned. ➢ LOCAL HERBARIA - Covering a region in a country. ➢ SPECIAL HERBARIA - Often small with limited sps. ➢ Herbarium in different countries remain associated with • Colleges, • Universities, • Scientific societies, • Research institutes, • Botanical gardens. ➢ Overall 1600 worlds most important herbaria are listed in Index Herbarium (Holmgren et al;1981) HERBARIUM TECHNIQUE :- 1.Field equipments 2.Plant collection 3.Pressing, drying & poisoning 4. Mounting & labeling 5.Preservation of Herbarium sheets Field equipments➢ Scissors for cutting woody twigs &other parts of shrubs & trees. ➢ Trowel for digging roots, bulbs, rhizome etc. ➢ One sharp knife. ➢ One pair forceps. ➢ Vasculum for collecting specimens. ➢ Herbarium press with blotting paper. ➢ One field book. ➢ Thread for tagging ➢ Hand lens. PLANT COLLECTION ➢ Plants should be collected from different localities & habitat. ➢ Plant should be healthy. ➢ Diseased plants or their parts should not be collected. ➢ In case of herb complete plant & in case of shrubs & trees flowering & fruiting twig should be complete & bent in V or M shape. ➢ A field notebook should be maintained ➢ Collected plants should be kept in either in vasculum or polythenebags. Pressing, drying & poisoning ➢ Collected plants should be pressed carefully on old news paper or blotting paper. ➢ The newspaper sheets should be changed frequently after 24, 48,72 hrs & then 7dfays to avoid blackening & decaying of plant materials. ➢ After complete drying the specimen are given poisoning treatment by 0.2%Hgcl2. Hgcl2 in absolute alcohol. ➢ It is again dried & kept ready for mounting. Mounting & labeling➢ The specimen must be mounted for permanent record on a sheet called as Herbarium sheet of standard size i.e 11.5 X 17.5. ➢ Specimens are mounted on the sheet with the help of gum or cellotape.etc ➢ Each specimen should be labelled .Label should be on lower right hand corner of sheet. with following informations. ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ ❑ Plant no. Botanical name Local name Family Locality Date of collection Abundance Altitude Name of plant collector Remark Preservation of herbarium sheets➢ To avoid attack of silver fish, bookworm e.t.c. It is necessary to spray the specimen with insect repellent or disinfectant as D.D.T. ➢ Naphthalene balls may be use. ➢ After identification herbarium sheets are kept in thin paper folder. ➢ Finally kept in Almirah according to any accepted system of classification. Benthem & Hooker system of classification. Some of the importance of Herbarium ➢ It is a source of knowledge about the flora of a region or a locality or a country. ➢ It is very much useful in the study of cytology, in studying the struct ure of DNA, chemotaxonomy, numerical taxonomy, etc. ➢ It is also used as a reservoir of gene pool studies. ➢ It provides the important materials for the anatomical studies. ➢ It is also used as a data store which gives us a lot of information abo ut the various details about plants. ➢The type specimens present in the herbaria help in the correct identification of plants. ➢Morphological characters of pollens which are stored in the herbaria remain unchanged even up to 200 years. ➢ Herbarium specimens are useful as references for plant identification and for the determination of plant locations and ranges, abundance, habitat, and flowering and fruiting periods. ➢ They are used for studies in which the differences between plant species are evaluated and described (monographs) or in which the species growing in a region are reported (floras). ➢ Herbarium has a great role in medicobotany as it provides material for ethnobotany, phytochemical, pharmacological & clinical researches. ➢ It provides list of endangered sps. of any region. ➢ These are the various uses and importance of herbaria. Hence various herbaria are located at the national and international centers. ➢ Largest herbarium of the world is situated in Royal Botanical Garden. ➢ It's a 326-acre site at Kew with 40 historically important buildings; it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 3 July 2003. ➢ The collections at Kew and Wakehurst Place include over 28,000 taxa of living plants, 8.3 million plant and fungal herbarium specimens, and 30,000 species in the seed bank. Some of the important Herbaria (Both National and International): ➢ Herbarium of Royal Botanical Garden – Kew, London in England - More than 60,00,000 specimens. ➢ New York Botanical Garden-New York -U.S.A.- More than 3,000,000 specimens. ➢ Museum of National History, -Paris –More than 5,000,000 specimens. ➢ Herbarium of Indian Botanical Garden- Kolkata, India - More than 10,00,000 specimens ➢ Botanical Survey of India – Coimbatore -Tamil Nadu- More than 1,90,000 specimens ➢ Forest Research Institute-Dehradoon -More than 3,000,000 specimens ➢ B.S.I-Allahabad-U.P-More than 40,000 specimens ➢ B.S.I-Shillong -Meghalaya- More than 100,000 specimens LARGEST HERBARIA IN THE WORLD (After Shetler, 1969) Location Kew, England Leningrad, USSR Paris, France Geneva, Switzerland Lyon, France Abbreviation K LE p G LY Cambridge, Mass. (Com A, AMES, ECON, FH, GH, bined herbaria of Harvar NEB d University) New York (Bot. Gard.), N ew York Washington, D.C. (U.S. N at. Herb.) Chicago, Illinois St. Louis, Mo. (Mo. Bot. Gard.) Berkeley, California No. of Specimens 6,500,000 6,000,000 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,800,000 Rank by Size 1 2 3 4 5 3,540,000 NY 3,000,000 8 US 3,000,000 8 F 2,350,000 11 MO 1,700,000 14 UC 1,225,000 21 Ann Arbor, Mich. MICH 1,000,000 24 Philadelphia, Pa. PH 1,000,000 24 ➢ Indian Botanical Garden, Sibpur, Kolkata has the largest herbarium in India. ➢ It was established by the Botanical Survey of India, about one million specimens. ➢ World-wide, mainly phanerogams and ferns of India and neighbouring countries of South and South East Asia. ➢ In addition to these there are some authentic collections of Cryptogams, Associated Botanic Gardens: Indian Botanic Garden, Calcutta, and Lloyd Botanic Garden, Darjeeling. ➢ The herbarium of the Forest Research Institute, Dehradun has about 3, 00,000 specimens. The herbaria of Agricultural College and Research Institute, Coimbatore and National Botanical Gardens, Lucknow, have about 200,000 and 40,000 specimens respectively. ➢ There are about 25,000 specimens in the herbarium of the Divisions of Mycology and Plant Pathyology at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. The herbarium of the Division of Botany at I.A.R.I. New Delhi, contains about 3000 specimens. WEBSITES AND FEW LINKS RESEARCH PAPER http://www.walkthroughindia.com/offbeat/15-beautiful-botanical-gardens-india-visit/ http://www.ugaoo.com/knowledge-center/top-8-botanical-gardens-of-india/ https://indiagardening.com/gardens/top-5-botanical-gardens-in-india/ https://www.facebook.com/CSIR-National-Botanical-Research-Institute-Lucknow-India315322921870856/ Chakraverty, R.K. and Mukhopadhyay, D.P., (1990). A Directory of Botanic Gardens and Parks in India. Botanical Survey of India, Calcutta, India. THANKU

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HERBARIUM THEIR TECHNIQUE & SIGNIFICANCE @ FEW BOTANICAL GARDENS OF INDIA

HERBARIUM THEIR TECHNIQUE & SIGNIFICANCE @ FEW BOTANICAL GARDENS OF INDIA

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