1. Living World - part 02 - Herbarium and Botanical Gardens

 

1. Living World - part 02 - Herbarium and Botanical Gardens


Herbarium :

  • The word herbarium (plural-herbaria) was coined by Pitton de Tournefort in the book ‘Elemens’. 
  • The art of herbarium was initiated by an Italian taxonomistLuca Ghini (1490-1556). 
  • Herbaria are effective tools in taxonomic studies. 
  • A herbarium is essentially a dried plant specimen that is pressed, treated and mounted on standard size sheet in order to preserve it.
  1. Date
  2. place of collection along with detailed classification 
  3. highlighting with its ecological peculiarities
  4. characters of the plant are recorded on the same sheet. 
  5. Local names and name of the collector may be added. 
  6. This information is given at lower right corner of sheet and is called 'label'.
Botanical Gardens :
  • Botanical gardens are the places where plants of different varieties collected from different parts of the world, are grown in a scientific and systematic in a in vivo manner.
  • Plants are labeled. 
  • The label-board shows scientific as well as common name of the plant.
Know the scientists :
  • In 1543, first botanical garden of the world was established by an Italian Prof. Luca Ghini (A. D. 1490-1556) at Pisa, Italy. 
  • Botanical garden at Kew in England is known for largest  collection of more than 30,000 specimens (preserved plants) and more than 7 million herbaria.
Conservation of Biodiversity :
  • Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms in an ecosystem. 
  • Biodiversity is essential to maintain ecological stability.
  • The extent of complexity and density of biodiversity can be regarded as a measure of health of an ecosystem. 
  • Population explosion and over exploitation of resources has resulted in loss of biodiversity at an alarming rate. 
  • Conservation involves attempting to slow down, stop or even reverse the loss in the natural habitat of organism. This is known as in-situconservation. 
  • Biodiversity helps to maintain stability in an ecosystem. 
  • Loss of one variety of organisms can affect entire ecosystem.

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