The art and science of the herbier

Look in the garden section of any Paris bookstore right now, and you'll find the following books: L'Herbier du Monde, L'Herbier Vagabonde, L'Herbier Oublié, Herbier Gourmand, Mon Grand Herbier, Mon Herbier de Santé, L'Herbier Voyageur, L'Herbier de nos Montagnes, Je Fais mon Herbier au Fil des Saisons... The list goes on and on. Everything herbier is all the rage right now. So just what is an herbier?



An herbier is essentially what we call an herbarium specimen--a pressed, dried plant attached to a sheet of paper, identified with the plant's Latin name, family, location it was collected, and date. A herbarium specimen is the time-honored way of identifying plants, and serves--in collection--as a means of studying and classifying them. Herbarium specimens are usually housed in herbariums--special facilities within universities or botanic gardens where the specimens are safely stored and protected from the ravages of insects, humidity, and harsh light.

While "herbarium specimen" is a ponderous, derivative, and dry-sounding name, herbier is more elegant--and also more inclusive. An herbier can be not only the afore-described herbarium specimen, but also a dried flower "picture" which serves as a collective example of the flora of a certain place, as a memento of a visit, or simply as a decorative composition--much like a "painting" of dried flowers. And in French, herbier also refers to the institution housing a such a collection.

The art and science of the herbieris experiencing a renaissance in France right now. Not only is there a proliferation of how-to books, but herbier themes are showing up everywhere--in fashion, fabrics, and other decorating items. And since pressing flowers and making compositions with them is something I enjoyed as a child, my own interest has rekindled along with the public wave.

But before we look at more light-hearted incarnations of the herbier, let's honor its scientific roots. For over five centuries, plant explorers and botanists have used this method to preserve specimens of plants for identification and further study. And amazingly, no one has ever improved on the herbier for this sort of botanic study. That is to say, making herbiers is very much a part of current botanical collecting and study.



While herbiers are still used in the traditional manner--for gross, naked-eye comparison of species and variants, modern scientific technology has added new dimensions to herbarium study. Now, microscopic samples of herbarium specimens are removed and subjected to all manner of biochemical studies, allowing not only finer degrees of taxonomy but also revealing priceless data about environmental factors at the time the specimen was harvested--information that could never be revealed by a digital photograph, no matter how high its resolution. Scientists have been able to germinate seeds hundreds of years old.



A scientific herbier--whether prepared for an institution's collection or for your own private edification--should include the whole plant (including the root, photo right) or as many parts of it as possible. However, for taxonomic (identification and classification) purposes, the flower remains the most important part of the plant.





Almost as important to study as the plant itself is the information accompanying it on the herbarium sheet. This includes the Latin name of the plant, location of collection, date collected, name of the collector, and name of the institution where the specimen is housed, at the very least. Notes may also elaborate on the nature of the habitat where the plant was found, whether it was rare or abundant. If the specimen is part of an institutional collection, all loans will also be recorded, with name of borrowing institutions and dates of transactions.



Many people in France make their own herbiers as a means of learning about plants and memorizing their identification. Of course, this is nothing but a personal application of what herbierswere all about to begin with. In fact, you will find that in the process of preparing herbier pages, you will become intimately acquainted with the plant's characteristics. And the process of labeling and filing your herbiers will burn them into your memory.



Bernard Bertrand (photo left) is perhaps the father of the modern herbiers movement--if you can call it that--in France. A prolific writer of many titles on botany, organic garden techniques, and wild plant and flower cuisine (with his wife Annie-Jeanne), he is an ardent advocate of the value of the herbiers as a means of private study. When I visited him with the crew of Smart Gardening, a PBS television program, he showed us how to prepare an herbier and also described how useful they are to him in his study and writing. Showing us a page with about a dozen different rosehips mounted in a fan-shape, he pointed out that in the wild, you would never see all these different rose species in fruit together. Constructing this special page allowed him to memorize the minute differences in the hips and thus recognize the different species by their fruits in the wild. Bernard also uses his herbiers as models to draw botanic illustrations for many of his books.



Here, then, is Bernard Bertrand's simple method for making your own herbiers. Collect your plants in the early morning just after the dew has dried. Arrange the fresh plants among the pages of a phone book. Of course, you could avail yourself of a fancy flower press, but Bernard, being a frugal person, swears by the yellow pages. Its paper is perfectly absorbent, its large size accommodates large plants, and its weight quickly presses them.

After a couple of days, open and check your plants. They should be limp but not yet dry. Take advantage of this moment in the drying process to fine-tune their position on the page, making sure that each flower and leaf is showing to best advantage.

After one to three weeks, your specimens should be perfectly dry. Obtain some good quality, preferably acid-free, moderately absorbent and thick paper, such as water color stock. (In Paris, some fine old stationery stores still sell ready-to-use herbier pages.) Arrange your plant specimen attractively on the page, and fix it in place with narrow (1/8-inch) strips of Scotch tape (the modern, matte plastic type, not the cellophane type). Use just enough tiny pieces of tape at strategic spots to fix the specimen firmly in place.

Now, using your finest script, label the sheet with all the appropriate information (as detailed above). You will want to invest in a nice fountain pen with black ink for this purpose.

Traditionally, herbiers are made with only one plant to a page. However, some naturalists historically have made herbiers with collections of specimens from a particular locale or habitat. An offshoot of this practice was the Victorian practice of making keepsake herbiers, with a selection of plants organized to serve as a reminder of a certain garden or voyage. If your interest is more artistic than scientific, you may want to arrange any mixture of flowers and leaves on the page in an attractive manner, adding a scripted name or not--as the fancy strikes you.



Depending on your reason for making the herbier, either place it in a notebook, or frame it for display. Notebooks of herbier pages should be organized according to plant families or other categories for most effective study. If you display your herbier , be sure to place it so it is out of direct light to minimize fading of its colors.




No matter what sort of herbier you make, be sure to date it. Whether it's you, your grandchildren, or someone in the distant future who is admiring your work, the date will always be an important part of information, as well as adding a certain poignancy to the page. The mysterious attraction of the herbier lies in its ability to preserve the fragility of a flower for scores or even hundreds of years--a simple bit of magic that modern times have not improved on.



If you come to Paris, don't miss the world's biggest collection of herbiers at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in the Jardin des Plantes. Spanning five centuries of botanical exploration, the Muséum houses the lifetime collections of such luminary plant explorers as Joseph de Tournefort; Joseph de Jussieu; the providentially named Pierre Poivre; ("poivre" means "pepper")"spice thief" who was determined to wrest the spice trade from the Dutch; Louis-Antoine de Bougainvillea; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and many others. Several of the streets around the Muséum are named after these famous botanists.

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Products of Interest:
Pyrenées wildflower herbier--Multiflower (large)
Feuilles de fleurs 'Ikebana'
Antique herbier (herbarium page)