Herbarium in a folder with files. How to make a herbarium from plants, flowers and leaves

October is a period of enchanting golden autumn, it is best time for walks in the park and compiling a herbarium of leaves. Bright foliage that falls from the trees - good material for the autumn herbarium.

The leaves for the herbarium must be dry; they are selected and carefully straightened. Without bending, the copies are placed in a folder. Fallen colored leaves contain less moisture and will take less time to dry than those that have been picked.

How to collect a herbarium from autumn leaves

The collected leaves at home are spread on a newspaper, covered with other newspapers and placed under a press to dry. Heavy books and other improvised means can be used as such a press. Napkins need to be changed at least once every three days to prevent rot.

Drying in newspapers or pressed paper will take longer, but the collected specimens will last longer. You can dry the leaves quickly using an iron. Leaves from the trees are placed in newspaper and ironed. The iron should not be very hot. Drying with an iron is carried out several times (3-4) until the leaves are completely dry.

The dried leaves, one at a time, are carefully glued using white strips of paper onto thick A3 paper sheets. If collected leaves not very large, then ordinary album sheets may be suitable for a herbarium.

Next to each specimen they write the name of the plant, place of collection, time of collection, information about the bush or tree. If there are seeds, they are glued next to the leaf. There is no need to try to attach all the leaves face up.

(Here are the pictures you can come up with if you put leaves on a sheet of paper and draw in the details with a pencil)

Sometimes back side a leaf can tell you a lot about a plant. The leaves can be folded so that this reverse side is visible; it may have characteristics: fluff or gloss.

The leaves do not need to be glued, but rather sewn on with white or green threads. The sheets are combined into a herbarium folder; you can use transparent files or a file folder.

The herbarium is ready!

Crafts from autumn leaves

You can make such wonderful crafts with your own hands from autumn leaves.

For example, a wonderful elk and a cunning fox:

Here is a bird on a branch and a wise owl:

And even a real African elephant:

Task-game. Find which tree dropped which leaf.

You can copy each picture, cut it out of paper, and the task is to find each leaf its own tree.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge the image)

Birch

Maple

Poplar

A herbarium is usually made for one of two purposes. One of them is scientific and educational. She is pursued by botanists and schoolchildren performing homework on the relevant subject. The second is decorative, because from dried leaves and flowers you can make beautiful panels, postcards, bookmarks and other items. You can also dry a plant “as a keepsake,” although this desire is less likely to become the reason for creating a herbarium. How to make a herbarium primarily depends on the purpose for which it is collected and designed, although the basic recommendations will be the same, regardless of the reason.

How to collect plants for a herbarium

Herbarium of leaves

It is important collection time flowers and leaves for herbarium. This is usually done in the afternoon, no earlier than 11 o’clock. By this time, there is no dew left on the plants. Dew increases the humidity of plants, which causes them to dry out longer and may even rot. For the same reason, it is not recommended to collect plants for a herbarium after rain. In other words, it should be at least 12 hours after the rain, or better yet, even more. Weather On the day of plant collection, it is optimal to be warm and sunny, when the temperature is between 20-25 degrees.

Which plants to choose for a herbarium, depends on the purpose of its creation. If it is scientific and educational, then it is best to choose the most typical samples. That is, it is better to give preference to leaves and flowers of medium size and regular shape. If some of the leaves of the plant have dried out, then you should not tear them off in this case, so as not to disturb appearance. If the herbarium is made with decorative purpose, for example, for children's creativity, then leaves and flowers of bizarre shape, on the contrary, should attract your attention first of all - you should give preference to these. In any case, leaves and flowers need to be intact. It is necessary to take several samples of them in order to, if necessary, replace a specimen damaged during drying.

Twigs for the herbarium are cut with sharp pruning shears, medicinal and other small plants, the herbs are carefully dug out of the ground, trying not to damage the root.

Going for plants, flowers and leaves to make a herbarium from them, need to take with you a large book, sheets of appropriate format and paper clips. The collected copies should be immediately placed between the sheets of a book or album, lined with white paper and fastened. This should be done so as not to damage the plants before they are brought home and subjected to further processing.

Why and who needs a herbarium? Firstly, for schoolchildren for biology lessons. An album with dried plants is a summer assignment for fifth grade students. Secondly, compiling a herbarium is an excellent excuse for family walks in nature. Properly dried and placed appropriately, plants can be an excellent gift, interior decoration, or design highlight. So, we learn how to collect and dry a herbarium, as well as how to decorate it beautifully.

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Photo gallery: Vacation assignment: learning to make a herbarium for school and home with your own hands

How to make a herbarium with your own hands - master class with photos

Albums or notebooks in A4, A5 format or mats are usually used as the basis for a herbarium. This master class presents step-by-step instruction for making a herbarium on landscape-size sheets. The herbarium presented here is called " Medicinal plants middle zone Russia." You can choose any other topic, for example, “Our holiday by the sea: coastal flora”, “A trip to the forest: what blooms in August” and so on.

On a note! To collect specimens, choose a dry, sunny day. The likelihood of mold and fungal infection of your exhibits collected in rainy weather, equal to 95%.

How to collect plants for a herbarium

Tools for collecting plants:

• Narrow scoop (if you want to get a plant with a root system)
• Small nail scissors
• Garden secateurs
• Container for transporting specimens (you can use a wicker rectangular basket)
• Small jar (50 g) with garden varnish or clay diluted with water until mushy
• Old newspapers

Advice: Before you go “hunting”, first study the features of the root system of the selected plants, so that unexpectedly for you, a little blue flower does not end up with roots one and a half meters deep.

Step-by-step instruction:

1. Cut off the leaves and flower heads with nail scissors and place them in a container, lined with newspapers.
2. Cut large branches with pruning shears, covering the cut areas with garden pitch or clay. (This procedure is very important to do if you have children with you. They should see that we do not come to nature like barbarians, and even if we take something from it, we make sure that nature has enough strength to recover).
3. It is better to dig up those plants that do not have very powerful root system. We dig in on four sides at a distance of 4-5 cm from the base, lift the soil and pull it out along with the turf. We carefully beat it, clean off the lumps of earth, place it on newspaper, and put it in a container.

An example of how to properly dig up a plant is presented in the video.

Advice: try not to dig up rare ones, unique plants!

How to dry plants correctly

Necessary materials:

• Fat Old book- 1 PC
• Thick cardboard - 2 sheets
• Baking tray - 1 piece
• Glass of water
• Press weights, irons

Step-by-step instruction:

Note: there are other drying methods. natural material: in the microwave or oven, using hydrogen peroxide. These methods speed up the drying process, but the specimens become deformed, darken, or take on an unnatural color. By the way, sometimes you can read such information that supposedly a book after plants are dried in it becomes unusable - it gets wet and loses its shape. This is wrong! If the plants were collected on a dry day, then nothing bad will happen to the book.

How to make a herbarium with your own hands

Necessary materials:

• Sheets of white cardboard A 4 – 10 pcs. (by number of plants)
• Landscape sheets A 4 – 10 pcs.
• Strips of corrugated colored cardboard, length – 12 cm, width – 4 cm – 10 pcs.
• Transparent files – 5 pcs. (or A4 tracing paper - 10 pcs.)
• Hole punch, scissors, PVA glue, twine or thick thread, sewing needle and thread, bright felt-tip pen.

Step-by-step instruction:

As you can see, making a herbarium with your own hands is not a difficult job and even small schoolchildren can do it. The herbalist should be stored in a dry place, preferably on the top shelves, in a horizontal position.

With the onset of autumn, schoolchildren and their parents often go for a walk in the forest. And not just to enjoy the last warm days. Very often the purpose of such weekends is to collect natural material. After all, children will need to make herbariums from leaves. October is especially good for this, when all the foliage turns bright yellow and red. Having properly preserved such a “harvest”, you can then spend long winter evenings decorating it. Or even make paintings or crafts from dried plants with your own hands.

Collection of materials for the herbarium

But first you need to choose the right foliage and flowers for drying. If they have too much moisture, they may become moldy or even rot. Therefore, in order for leaf herbariums to retain a presentable appearance for a long time, you need to know the rules for collecting material.

1. “Hunting” for leaf-flowers should only be done on a dry and sunny day. Drying wet plants is much more difficult.

2. Only whole, undamaged specimens should be selected from fallen leaves. They must be dry.

3. To bring future leaf herbariums home, it is advisable to take files and packages with you. It is better to put each sample in a separate folder; you can supplement it with a note about the place and time of collection.

Preparation of collected material

Now that everything interesting in the forest has been collected, it needs to be dried and preserved. There are several ways to make a herbarium from leaves. They are used depending on what plants were collected and how they are planned to be used. The most popular method is press drying. The sheet is placed between two pieces of tracing paper or paper and then placed in a book or under a small board. Several more very impressive volumes are laid out on top. In 2 weeks, your DIY leaf herbarium will be ready. This technique works best for drying small flowers.

The second method involves drying with an iron. First you need to cover the sheet with paper, and then iron it with a warm iron until completely dry. Compared to the first case, it significantly speeds up preparation, but is completely unsuitable for fragile flowers and thin leaves. Moreover, under the influence high temperature The color of the material may change.

Another way allows you to preserve all the beauty of fresh plants. To do this, leaves or flowers are collected in bunches and hung upside down in a dark, cool place until completely dry. In this way you can dry rose buds, chamomile flowers and other twigs with flowers and fruits.

Herbarium design

When all the leaves and flowers have dried, you can start decorating them. This stage will probably take more than one evening. But then you can admire your work with pleasure. If herbariums of leaves and flowers will be used as a manual for natural history, you can paste each specimen onto a separate sheet and put it in a file. Each such page must be supplemented with a memorable inscription with the name of the plant, the time and place of its collection. All that remains is to collect everything in a folder.

Such plants can also be used to make interesting crafts. By the way, in primary school Children often do this in labor lessons. These can be beautifully designed paintings, illustrations for fairy tales, small models of parks and squares, etc. Such a pastime will perfectly brighten up any winter evening.