Herbarium specimens

Introduction

After a plant is collected, all the characteristics that will be lost when it is dried and pressed are described in detail. The colour of all the important distinguishing parts of the plant such as petals, sepals, stems and leaves are noted using the RHS Colour Chart. The specimen is arranged carefully and dried between absorbent paper under pressure. The dried specimen is then attached to stiff paper, labelled and filed in the herbarium cabinets. Details of all new accessions, whether images or herbarium specimens, are added to the Horticultural Database and barcodes are used as unique identifying marks.

A future project is to make the information about the collections available online

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