Make your own herbarium
Activities & Resources for Outdoor Education
Make your own herbarium
Activity | Grades 5-12
Learn about local plants by creating your own herbarium of dried plant specimens! In this downloadable activity, you’ll find out how to ethically collect, dry and mount your samples. Herbariums are great tools for scientific research. They’re libraries of preserved plant samples that help scientists catalogue and study local flora. They are a wonderful catalog of biodiversity and can be used for years after their collection. The good thing about a herbarium is that you only need a few samples to research a lot of information about a species. We still use herbarium specimens from the 1600s!
Materials needed
- Two pieces of carboard
- Old newspaper or papers
- Glue
- A couple of heavy books
- Plant samples you’ll collect (instructions on how to do the downloadable PDF)
Acknowledgements
- We wanted to express our sincere gratitude to all of the hands, minds, and hearts whose publicly shared knowledge, teachings and contributions were a part of this learning resource.
- We always love to hear from you! Please send your creations to education@sierraclub.bc.ca
- We invite you to start with one thing, just one action to help build a brighter future for the lands, waters and all who call them home.
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Photo Credits: Mya Van Woudenberg