Drying the herbarium at home: preparing dried flowers and leaves for the herbarium

See also:

Dried flowers: ways to dry flowers

Herbarium of leaves

How to properly dry roses at home

There is fast drying of the herbarium, and slow.

Hot drying of herbarium

You can quickly dry the herbarium using an iron. The faster the plant dries, the more likely it is to retain its color. After all, it’s not uncommon that after drying for a long time, you can notice that the colors have faded and ugly brown spots appear on the leaves that weren’t there before.

For the herbarium, you need to select even plants, without rot. If necessary, rinse them under water, shake off any droplets, and place them on a towel.

The surface should be moderately hard. Straighten the plant, cover it with a sheet of paper, and start stroking it with a burning iron. There is no need to press hard, otherwise the drying leaf may break.

Press drying

Sort the plants by thickness. Do not dry delicate fern leaves together with thick branches. Plants must be uniform.

Place the leaves between sheets of old newspaper and press down on top with a press. Large encyclopedias or any other heavy books can serve as a press. Approximately once every 2-3 days, go through the herbarium for ventilation and revision, maybe something has already dried out and the leaves can be put into an album.

Drying flowers

For volumetric drying of flowers, special meshes are used, on which the flower heads are located, and the petals are dried as needed.

Small flowers can be dried by hanging them in small bouquets with flowers facing down.

Large roses, chrysanthemums and other flowers can be dried along with the stem. To do this, you need a box in which you can put the flower, and fill the box to the top with silica gel or coarse dry sand.

How to properly dry a herbarium and prepare dried flowers for your crafts, watch the video: