Tuesday, April 19, 2016

Mounting Specimens at the Yale Herbarium

First you take a piece of archival paper, tape, weights, glue, brush, and scissors.  You take a specimen that has been dried and then place it artfully on the paper.  Some specimens are over ten years old or more.  Also it's rather difficult to find the best 'pose', you need to have a front and a back leaf exposed.  The information tag gets glued on the bottom right and pocket gets glued on the bottom left.  The pocket is for anything that has broken off through the years and is left in the newspaper.
You need to cut the tape into very thin strips.  In a four hour time slot that I work I can usually mount 6-7 specimens.  
The upper two were from Madagascar collected in 2001.  Originally they were part of the huge herbarium at the Missouri Botanical Garden Herbarium.
From Tolland County CT.

2 comments:

  1. Nice work if you can get it! It looks like fun. I remember doing a school project like that (well, just with Scotch tape) a long long time ago. I wish I had my leaf scrapbook now.

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  2. It's very exacting work but I really enjoy it.

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