My experience making the herbarium

As I mentioned before in other blogs, I study forestry, and in the first year, that is, last year we were entrusted with the task of making a herbarium for the course of botany. In it, we had to include a total of thirty plants, twenty of native origin and ten of exotic origin.

 A herbarium is a collection of dry and classified plants, used as material for the study of botany. It basically consists of three stages, the first is the collection of plants, for that a scissor is used to prune as it is easier to cut a branch of the tree or shrub. The second step is to place the sample between newspapers to absorb the water, the idea is to dry it completely, and then smash, ideally have a press, but I occupied very large and heavy books. Finally, once you are satisfied with the aesthetic and drying results, the last step is to sew them on a piece of cardboard in addition to identifying the specie collected, along with characteristics of where it was taken, such as altitude or region, among others things.

I remember that I collected the majority of the native samples in the central zone of the country, in sectors near the Andes mountain range and also in the region of Valparaiso. For the exotic was very easy, since many trees that are in the city are of exotic origin. I wasted about four months. It was a very fun experience, I enjoyed going to different places with my friends. I can say it's a job that I'm proud of.

This picture shows part of my herbarium and the "Quebrada de Macul" (one of the places where I went to collect)