Question

write a note on uses of herbaria
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Answer 1

For the past year or so I have been keeping a list of uses of herbaria. Two recent events have greatly increased that list. First, I published an article titled “The Importance of Herbaria” (Funk, 2003), and after it came out a number of my colleagues sent in additional uses. Second, I attended a workshop about natural history collections (see below), and in preparing for the workshop the list increased to ca. 50. During the workshop additional uses were mentioned, and the current total stands at 72. Hopefully the list will grow to 100 after this article is published. If you would like to use this list you can download it on line at the Biological Diversity of the Guianas web site (Hollowell et al., 2003) but please also send any additions or corrections to me so that I can update the site.

Herbaria, dried pressed plant specimens and their associated collections data, ancillary collections (e.g., photographs) and library materials, are remarkable and irreplaceable sources of information about plants and the world they inhabit. They provide the comparative material that is essential for studies in taxonomy, systematics, ecology, anatomy, morphology, conservation biology, biodiversity, ethnobotany, and paleobiology, as well as being used for teaching and by the public. They are a veritable gold mine of information and the foundation of comparative biology. According to the updated website of Index Herbariorum (Holmgren & Holmgren, 2003), there are 3240 herbaria in the world. Just in the USA there are more than 60 million specimens in 628 herbaria (Funk and Morin, 2000). At the US National Herbarium (National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution) there are nearly 5 million specimens, and, just for the record, about 500,000 of the US specimens are in the Compositae.

Answer 2

Herbaria also preserve a historical record of change in vegetation over time. In some cases, plants become extinct in one area or may become extinct altogether. In such cases, specimens preserved in a herbarium can represent the only record of the plant's original distribution. Environmental scientists make use of such data to track changes in climate and human impact.

Herbaria have also proven very useful as source of plant DNA for use in taxonomy and molecular systematics

I hope this will help you