THE HERBARIUM TECHNIQUE – Science Laboratory Technology Project

Thesis Overview

1.0 INTRODUCTION1.1 BACKGROUND INFORMATIONAccording to Clamberland (1994), herbarium can simply be defined as a collection of dried, preserved and pressed plant specimens which are arranged systematically, serving as a taxonomic reference of plants for their identification and classification. He further defines it as a repository of preserved and labeled plant specimen to allow easy access and archival storage. The herbarium is useful for research identification of plants and for comparison of materials with precious collection. It is also a growing source of knowledge about the vegetation of an area. Its effectiveness and value depend on the care with which the specimens are preserved, mounted, completeness of identification, labeling, satisfactory arrangement and maintenance of the collection. Dried and mounted specimen are stored in cabinets with tight fitting doors. The storage cabinets is provided with partitions in which the families of plants may be arranged in alphabetical order or (more usually) in some presumed phylogenetic order. The specimens are typically in form of herbarium sheets, pressed and dried plants have been glued to a sheet of heavy paper, together with a labeled data. The label describes information which include the plants Latin names, the origin of the collections, the date of collection, and the name of the collector. Within the cabinet the specimens are arranged according to the family, genus and species they represent as well as the geographic location from which they were collected.1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
AIM: Construction of a herbarium.
OBJECTIVES INCLUDES
i. To construct a herbarium.
ii. To identify plants to their species levels.
iii. To collect plants of agricultural and medicinal interest within our locality.1.3 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Since the already constructed herbarium. In the biology laboratory of Science Laboratory Technology, IMT Enugu is old, and the collected plant specimens are destroyed by termites and other pests, therefore there is need to collect new plants specimens to have an update collection of plant specimens that are properly classified for further references.1.4 HYPOTHESIS
H0. – Herbarium construction provides information within our locality.
H1. – Herbarium construction does not provides information within our locality.1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The significance of this project study is that, this research will provide an up to date herbarium for the biology laboratory of Science Technology department IMT Enugu.1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
Plant collection and identification are limited to agricultural and medicinal plants of local interest.