Interestingly, the term ‘Herbarium’ was initially used for the book on medicinal plants prepared by herbalists in pre-Linnaean times (Bridson and Forman, 1999). The collection of dried plant specimens was called ‘Hortus siccus’ (Stearn, 1957) or 'Hortus hyemalis' (Flannery, 2023). However, Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) and Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) consistently used the term ‘Herbarium’ for the collection of dried plants and this usage was established in science. The art of making dried plant specimens (herbarium specimens) started in the time of Luca Ghini, a professor of Botany at the University of Bologna, Italy (Thiers, 2020; Pandey and Kasana, 2021) and his contribution owes him the title ‘Father of Herbarium’. He and his students prepared many herbaria by drying plant specimens under pressure, mounting them on paper sheets and binding all sheets into a book-like volume. Carolus Linnaeus brought the change in it by keeping herbarium specimens separate but storing one above the other, much like today's practice (Singh, 2020). 

The contemporary methods for herbarium specimen preparation and herbarium management are available in books exclusively dedicated to these aspects (eg. Bridson & Forman, 1999; Smith, 1971; Jain & Rao, 1976; Rao & Sharma, 1990), general books on plant taxonomy (eg. Lawrence, 1951; Davis & Heywood, 1963; Radford, 1986; Simpson, 2019; Singh, 2020), and on the websites of some larger herbaria/ botanic gardens (eg. CAL, CANB, FLAS, MO, RBGE) of the world. ‘The Herbarium Handbook’ (Davies et al., 2023) is a recent document compiling information on modern herbarium management.  It includes crisp, short articles on almost every aspect of herbarium management and detailed recent literature is also indicated (Rawat, 2024). 

Types of Herbaria

Based on the coverage area and objectives four types of herbaria have been recognised by Bridson and Forman (1999):

1. General/ International Herbaria are very large with plant collections from all over the earth.

2. National/ Regional Herbaria are smaller than international herbaria and house the plants collected from a country or phytogeographical zone.

3. Local Herbaria are smaller with their coverage area being smaller like a small country, state, district, or a defined smaller area as National Park or any other nature reserve. Such herbaria may be synoptical in having all species of the area but represented by one or a few specimens.  

4. Special Herbaria are established for specific purposes. These may be 'Historical Herbaria' developed by some taxonomist or institution and kept safe with no changes in their original arrangement. A special herbarium may be a 'Herbarium of Limited Scope' focused on a specific smaller taxonomic group (e.g. Bryophytes) or ecological region (e.g. wetland). 'Teaching Herbaria' also fall into this category and is used for teaching taxonomy, morphology, economic botany, and sometimes ecology. A 'Job Related Herbarium' (e.g. herbarium housing weed species for agriculturists), or 'Herbarium for Special Research Programmes' ( e.g. herbarium housing voucher specimens of different types of studies) are also special herbaria.

The herbarium of Department of Biological Sciences, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, Pantnagar (INDIA) is a Special Herbarium as it is a 'Teaching Herbarium' as well as 'Herbarium for Special Research Programme'.