The Herbarium handbook: New spunbond technology: Collection, drying and storage of herbarium samples between spunbond sheets

This manual gives information additional to the existing editions about drying and keeping herbarium between the spunbond sheets, the approach not mentioned in Kew’s “The herbarium handbook”. This approach is known in Russia since 2007. The invention was patentized: Patent No. 71212, RF, priority N 2007137443 from 09.10.2007.”Spunbond” nonwoven polymeric fabric allows to introduce technologies to exclude paper and other moisture absorptive materials from the process of herbarium making. The idea of the new way of drying plants for the herbarium consists of creating thin air linen around the plant in the herbarium press with the use of spunbond. Thanks to the free air access, plants dry very quickly and stay flat at the same time.The plants are dried in the herbarium press with the use of black spunbond, with the density from 60 gram per square meter till 150 gram per square meter, instead of usual newspapers. As a result, there is no need for moister absorbing pads, no need for changing them!Reviewers: Professor Tatiana Silaeva, PhD, Elena Vargot, PhD. Pictures by A. Slavgorodskiy. English translation: Larissa Afanasyeva.