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A herbarium is a collection of pieces of plants, or sometimes entire individual plants, that have been pressed and dried so that their morphological features are maintained. Each specimen is tagged, named and labelled accurately with details of where, when and by whom it was collected and a description of the plant's habitat, the soil and surrounding plant community.
Carefully prepared and curated specimens can last indefinitely and there are many specimens in the world still extant from the eighteenth century. The New South Wales National Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney has specimens collected by Daniel Solander when he came with Captain Cook on the 'Endeavour' in 1770. The oldest specimen in the John T. Waterhouse Herbarium is a fungus collected in the 1890's.
As well as research, the herbarium and its associated library is used as a source of information and material for teaching purposes. The library is made available to staff and students and to facilitate this, a catalogue has been made available online.
Individual specimens may be cited by researchers in their publications as vouchers from which original data have been scored. Most usually this is morphological data, but molecular, chemical, histological, ecological and palynological data can be provided by herbarium specimens. The collection is available for use by staff and students of UNSW and also external researchers. Specimens are frequently requested for loan to other institutions for study.
All students are allowed supervised access to the herbarium, and those who may need to use it in the course of their studies are given the necessary specialised training to do so. Students from the School of Biological Science, in molecular systematics, environmental studies, mycorrhizal research, and aspects of ecology, biodiversity, and arid zone studies, are among those who have used the herbarium in recent years.
A common routine duty in the herbarium is checking the identification of 'unknown' plant specimens, where the unknown is matched with a named specimen.
There are 3 large trees of Waterhousea floribunda growing in the University grounds near the Life Sciences Building. This plant was named in honour of John T. Waterhouse, reflecting his longstanding interest in both rainforests and the family Myrtaceae. The photograph to right is of a flowering shoot of Waterhousea floribunda.
Enquiries: herbarium  unsw.edu.au |
