For preservation of plant material on a herbarium sheet the following tools and steps are required to be followed.
Tools Digger and pruning knife, sickle with long handle, vasculum, polythene bags, magazines or newspapers, blotting papers, plant press, field notebook, herbarium sheets, glue, labels, small transparent polythene bags.
One can prepare herbarium sheets by cutting papers of size `29xx41.5 cm(11 1/2xx16 1/2)`.
The preparation of a herbarium specimen required following steps
(i) Collection of plant or plant parts.
(ii) Pressing It involves the spreading and pressing of collected specimen over a newspaper so as to preserve its all parts.
(iii) Drying It involves the drying of the specimen between the folds of newspaper.
(iv) Poisoning Antifungal `(“dipping in” 2% HgCl_(2))`and pesticidal (DDT) treatment of the dried specimen
(v) Mounting It involves mounting of the specimen over a herbarium sheet.
(vi) Labelling and identification of the dried specimen are the last, while preparing a herbarium sheet.
Tools/equipments required for the collection of herbarium specimens are as follows
(i) A tin or aluminium container of `50xx30xx15` cm size.
(ii) Collection bags/plastic/polythene bags.
(iii) Digger for digging roots.
(iv) Magnifying lens of at least `10X` magnification.
(v) Field note book.
A preserved plant material on the herbarium sheet may provie information about the family, genus, species, date of collection, area of collection, etc., for taxonomic studies.