What is a herbarium and what is a herbarium specimen?

Do you ever remember picking a little flower, then placing it inside a book? After a few days, you would find a dry and completely flattened flower. With a bit of care, this flower could be stuck down on a board and will remain in this state for hundreds of years. Now if you took the time to write a little note next to your flower, recording the date that you collected it and where you found it…then this is what you could call a specimen.

Now imagine thousands of specimens such as the one that you have made, being collected and mounted by other explorers over many many years and all of these specimens get stored in one place. This place is known as a herbarium and the specimens will be arranged in cupboards according to which plant families they belong to.

Isn’t that wonderful? cupboards and cupboards of plant specimens that can tell us stories about where different plant species were collected over hundreds of years. Can you imagine the research potential of such a resource?! Have a look at the database of the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and see if there are any research questions that you can answer using the valuable collection data. Need some inspiration? Read about how this collection data has been used to determine if different cultural groups show preference for certain types of edible plants over others.