Herbarium
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
her-ba'ri-um, a collection of dried plants preserved for purposes of study. An older Latin name is the hortus siccus, or dry garden. If a plant be not too large it may be preserved, root and all. The botanist desires two specimens of each flowering plant, one in bloom, the other in fruit. Small plants are pressed entire. Characteristic portions of larger plants are selected. The collector places his specimens between thin sheets for convenience in handling. They are then dried under pressure between sheets of blotting or other bibulous paper. The blotters should be changed and dried at least daily in order to preserve the natural colors of the plant. When dry, the specimens are mounted on heavy paper of uniform size, usually eleven and one-half by seventeen and one-half inches. Each specimen is accompanied by a label giving the botanical name, the date and locality of collection, with such other information as to soil and altitude as may be of interest. Such specimens, laid away in jackets and preserved in cabinets, last for centuries. Specimens put away by Linnaeus, Hooker, and Gray are still in excellent condition, and are regarded by botanists as priceless. The British have been the most noted collectors. The most famous herbarium in the world is perhaps that of Kew near London. The British Museum and the London Linnaean society, the Universities of Paris, Leyden, Berlin, and Vienna have very valuable herbariums. The most valuable collection in the United States is probably the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University . Next to that comes the United States National Herbarium at Washington. The University of California, the Shaw Botanical Garden , and the New York Botanical Garden possess many specimens from which new species were named. See Botanical Garden ; Gray ; Linnaeus
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The method Aiton's described in 1910 — press between blotters, change them daily, mount on uniform heavy paper with a label giving name, date and locality — is still, almost word for word, how a herbarium specimen is made today, and the sheets Linnaeus and Gray put away are indeed still consulted. What has changed is what a specimen is for and how it is reached: dried tissue centuries old now yields DNA and is mined for climate data through flowering dates, and tens of millions of sheets have been photographed and put online through aggregators such as GBIF and JSTOR Global Plants, so a Kew or Gray sheet can be examined without travelling. The great collections named in 1910 remain the great collections, though Paris, Kew and the New York Botanical Garden each now count in the millions of sheets, far beyond anything the writer imagined. The pressure now runs the other way as well: some university herbaria have been closed or transferred for want of space and funding, Duke's among the most publicised.
Written for this edition, 2026.