Webinar: Natural History at Home – Pressed Plant Projects
Aired June 13, 2020
Gale Robertson:
Hello everyone. Welcome to today's Natural History at Home family program. My name is Gale and I'm a museum educator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. I'm so excited to welcome you to today's program.
Before we begin though, we want to acknowledge our current events and let you know that the National Museum of Natural History stands with the Secretary of the Smithsonian Dr. Lonnie Bunch in expressing our deepest sympathy to the families and communities impacted by discrimination and violence.
Today we are sharing our secretary's response and a resource in our Q&A that was developed by our colleagues at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. It's called Talking about Race. This resource has tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversations about race. We feel really privileged that you have chosen to spend your time with us today.
And while the museum has been closed, these webinars have provided a wonderful meeting space for people around the country and around the world to learn together about natural history science. And you know what? One of my favorite parts of hearing from you of the program is hearing from you all and saying hello.
So please, let's take a moment and use the Q&A to tell us where you're coming from, where you're tuning in from, and how old you are. So I'm coming to you from Washington, D.C. And we also have our colleague from the museum who's joining us for today's program, Erika Gardner. Erika, where are you joining us from?
Erika Gardner:
Hello. I'm in Bethesda, Maryland.
Gale Robertson:
Great. All right. So from Virginia. Hi, Elias from D.C., my neighbor. We have Ashley from Halifax, Canada. Hello. Marion from Granite, Maryland. Charlotte and Adam from Louisville, Colorado. Hi, Isabelle from Edson, New Jersey. Good to see so many familiar names.
Hi Gleason family. Hi Sophia from Derby. Good to see you again. We have GV from Tampa, Florida, Bridget and Thomas from Alexandria, Virginia. Hello. So happy that you guys are joining us today. And Irene from Queens Village, New York. Hi. Yes, Vicky and Adriana from Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Joshua from Kensington, Maryland. Hi everyone.
So hello to all our friends new and returning. Thank you all for joining us today. Hi, Leah from California. Christian, your dad says hello.
Okay, so for today's program, like I said, we are joined by one of my colleagues from the museum, Erika Gardner. She's a museum specialist in the Botany department. And so she's going to teach us today how to use press plants to create your own preserved plant notebook or to do something with an art project. So we already said hello to Erika.
So Erika joined us a few weeks ago to show us how to make plant presses out of materials that you could find at home. If you miss that program, you can access a recording of that program on our website. We'll post a link in the Q&A box and send a link in the post program email that I usually send out after these programs. So we'll make sure that you can access that recording and also the recording from this program later on.
And so we actually have some presses, some photos of presses that our friends have sent us. And yeah, so Eric and I were looking at these and they're so fantastic.
I think one thing that we really love about them is that people use a lot of different materials. They're different sizes. Right, Erika?
Erika Gardner:
Mm-hmm.
Gale Robertson:
So you showed us how to make a coaster size. So we see a couple of coaster size ones. And there's one made out of a ... What do you call this? Clipboard. And Coleman and Ember actually also sent a picture of what they were going to press. We have Inez's. That's made out of a Dr. Suess book, similar to the ones that Erika had showed us. And then I love this one from the Gleason family. It's a nice big plant press with these two-by-fours. And so it's a really cool way to press these big plant. So thank you guys for sharing that with us.
All right. And so for today's program, you have a couple of options for projects. And so here are some examples of things that you could make. And I'm showing these to you so that you can make sure that you have your supplies ready.
We have a bookmark that Erika made. You could also put your pressed plants on paper so that you could put them in a frame and you can also press plants and then make a picture around them like our friend has done here. You can also make something similar to a museum herbarium specimen. And then, so Erika's going to show us what that looks like later.
So to make your pressed plant projects along with us, you'll need the following materials. So for whatever project you're going to make, you're going to need white glue, tweezers, and small weighted objects. I have rocks to hold the plant down. So I have rocks because I don't have fancy weights like Erika does. But these rocks from my yard, from the neighborhood work really well.
You'll also need the paper for the project of your choice. I'm going to borrow this paper from my daughter Inez. You could have an eight-and-a-half-by-11 piece of paper if you want to make herbarium specimen. You could also have construction paper or for a greeting card or if you want to make a bookmark or you could even press plants in a notebook. So if you have a notebook that you want to put your plant in, make sure you have that ready.
Also, a pen, a note card or card stock if you want to make a label for your plant, and packing tape. And so packing tape's going to be used for laminating that bookmark.
All right, so before we get started, of course, we always have a couple of logistical things. Today's program is going to last around 30 to 40 minutes and there will be a recording posted on our website, like I said before, that you could refer to if you have to leave early.
Also, if you have any questions or comments for us during the program, please use the Q&A feature that I'm sure you guys have already warmed up on when you told us what to do. But for those of you that don't know where it is, it's either on the bottom of the screen or on the top of your screen.
And so this is how we're going to use ... We're going to use that Q&A feature to communicate with each other. And so if you have any questions for Erika, please put them in the Q&A feature. If we ask you any questions, please answer them in the Q&A feature. And so we do encourage you to ask us any questions that you have, and we'll try to answer them before the program ends.
And we also have closed captioning available. So if you want to turn that either on or off, you could click the CC button that's located near that Q&A.
All right, for those of you who have just logged on, my name is Gale and I'm an educator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. And I'm joined here today with Erika Gardner from the botany department in our museum. Hi, Erika.
Erika Gardner:
Hello.
Gale Robertson:
And so we going to be talking about how to use pressed plants in art projects. And so Erika's going to take us through the steps of attaching plants to paper, similar to the way that technicians at the museums create plant specimens for their collections. And she also has some really cool stories to share with us that'll hopefully inspire you in your art projects that you use with pressed plants. So before we get started with the projects, Erika, can you tell us more about what you do at the museum?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. So what we do is we take care of these dried pressed plant specimens, which this is an actual specimen from our collection. So what we do here is we attach a label on the bottom here and it tells us all the information about where this plant came from, and then it has the date on there so we know exactly when it was collected.
The location tells us exactly how to get back to this place where this plant was growing. And then it also gives us information about the scientific name and anything else about the habitat where this plant was growing. And we have this little packet that holds extra material. So if it falls off of the sheet, we can put it back up here for scientists to use.
So we have about 5 million specimens in our collection. This neat little number down here tells us the number. So this is about 3 million, the sheet number. So that's the 3 millionth specimen, not 3 million, but we're in 3 million right now mounting our specimens. Which I know I said 5 million, but some of our collections are actually wood blocks. They're pickles or they're plants in fluid. So we have different types of plant collections.
But for the most part, most of our specimens are dried pressed plants like this. And they're big. They're kind of like flashcards. So if you ever want to look at different species next to each other and compare them, you can do that. But a lot of our scientists actually use these specimens to take DNA from them. That's a big use right now. And there's many uses for our specimens.
But yeah, so I actually care for the preservation of these and we can make them last for a really long time. So this one was collected in 1984 and was just mounted a couple weeks ago, but we have specimens from the 1800s and 1700s, too.
Gale Robertson:
Wow, that's so cool. Yeah, Marion in the Q&A had commented, "Wow, 5 million specimens." And I actually had that same reaction, too.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, it's a lot.
Gale Robertson:
I know. So you said that plant that you showed us was from 1984. Do you know what the oldest specimen in our collection is?
Erika Gardner:
It was given to us from another collection as a gift, and that one was from 1500s, I'm pretty sure. So in Europe they have specimens that are from the Renaissance era, which is pretty cool that we can keep these specimens for hundreds of years.
Gale Robertson:
That's amazing. That's really cool. So you mentioned that scientists take DNA from them. So what are some other things that we could use pressed plants for?
Erika Gardner:
So people use them for art. So if you find a new species in science, which we'll have an example of I'll show you. If you find a new species, you have to actually show the characters that make it a new species. So you can use the specimen to find out those little fine details and then create a publication explaining why that plant is different from all other plants on Earth. And so there's all sorts of really cool uses.
People are finding new uses for these specimens. So DNA analysis didn't start happening until the '80s, which is pretty interesting that these specimens are so old, but yet we have been finding new uses for them through time. Some researchers are now taking soil samples from the roots on some of these plants and finding the fungus that that plant was growing with from the roots. And that was something that nobody thought you could do until just recently.
Gale Robertson:
That's amazing, yeah. We actually have a question from Maryanne that's related to this because it's just like, "These plants are so old, but how can you make them last a really long time?"
Erika Gardner:
Good question. People who really care about the specimens. So if you have people who are monitoring the environment that the plants are stored in, so we have to make sure that the plant collection doesn't get too humid because mold will grow on the paper. We have to make sure that the supplies that we're using to mount these specimens are actually pH neutral.
So it's a science in itself of preserving the plants to making sure that they're not going to become acidic and disintegrate over time, which a lot of our old specimens are actually disintegrating because the paper has a lot of acid in them. But the newer mounts that we have, we make sure that the quality of the material is archival quality.
And then the cabinets that we store our specimens in are supposed to be airtight. So they're supposed to prevent insects from getting in, but they still get in sometimes. Yeah. So quality, our environment, controlling the climate of the building is really important for the ... Yeah.
Oh, there's an awesome picture. So this is what our collection looks like. This is just one tiny row out of many, many rows in our collection. So this is a fun photo that they did to show the different types of objects that we have.
So you can see the cabinets are open. The plant specimens like the one that I was holding up, we file them away flat. So usually you would put a book with the spine up. However, we put our specimens flat. So if it was a book, we'd be laying our books down flat instead. Then we file them individually in these folders in these cabinets.
And we just make sure that we're very careful when we handle them because plants are fragile and they can break. So we really try to take care of how we handle them in the collection. And so these cabinets that they're in are actually supposed to be insect proof, fireproof, waterproof, all that great stuff to prevent any hazards from destroying our collection.
Gale Robertson:
Nice. Yeah and actually, this is sparking a lot of questions in our viewers. Charlotte and Adam have a couple of questions about plant storage. So what temperature are the plants kept at to stop them from breaking down? And then, yeah, so I'll let you answer that first and then I'll let you know the other question that they asked.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, so good question. That is a tough one. There are collections that have newer buildings and they're really trying to do their climate control to the best standards for the collection, which there are actual scientific papers out there that will explain the best temperature and the humidity.
So temperature and humidity are the two things that are the biggest concern for our collection. So if the humidity is high, we could get mold growth. So we try to keep the humidity level down, but not completely zero because then that wouldn't be good for us as well.
So there is, I think ... I'm trying to remember what the ... The newer collections, when you have a newer building, you have more control over this. Our building's actually pretty old. Our wing is from the 1960s, so it's not really well climate controlled, but we try with what we have. So I think it's supposed to be about 60 ... I'm trying to think. It's 65 or ... It's cold. I know it's cold.
Gale Robertson:
That's cold, yeah.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. Okay.
Erika Gardner:
So yeah.
Gale Robertson:
And then for our home presses, where is the best place in our houses to store the presses while we wait for the plants to dry?
Erika Gardner:
Good question. So try to keep them away from a damp area like a basement. Don't store 'em in your basement, because there is probably humidity and water in the air that will seep into the cardboard, or, I can't say the word, cardboard and the newspaper. So somewhere dry.
So if you have a closet that's really dry or a cabinet somewhere in the house where the temperature tends to stay the same. So just try to find a spot where the temperature doesn't fluctuate too much. Not near a window. Not near a door with a draft. So somewhere where the temperature is constant, like a closet or under the bed or something, but yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Okay. Yeah, that kind of goes to, Irene had a similar question about, what keeps plants from drying out so that they don't crumble? So it sounds like it's a lot of temperature control and humidity control. Is that right, Erika?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, there's that and just sometimes it depends on the plant that you're pressing. So if you're pressing a grass specimen, grasses are ... Their whole point of being is to, we call it, disarticulate. So the flowers are supposed to fall apart through time so that they can disperse. So it just really depends on the plant you are using.
So if it crumbles every time you do it, it's probably what the plant is meant to do in postmortem. But if it's something with the environment that's causing it, either you need to actually press your press a little flatter, because the reason why it might be warping or wrinkling is because it wasn't pressed all the way flat.
Gale Robertson:
OK. So you might want to tighten your press up a little bit?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Okay, great. Violet wants to know what the long twisty thing in the middle of the table is.
Erika Gardner:
That is a good question. That is a liana, a vine. So it's a part of a woody structure of a vine that is growing up a tree. So we have a researcher in our collection that actually studies lianas. That's the name of the vine. The technical scientific term is a liana, and they study these lianas in the rainforest. So yeah, good question.
Gale Robertson:
Great. I'm going to ask two more questions and then we'll get moving. Because I know that we want to get our projects done. Do you have a favorite plant in the collection?
Erika Gardner:
Oh my, this is the hardest question ever. This is tough because being a plant nerd I like a certain plant in a certain group. I guess since we're looking at the fern collection right here, this is where we store all of our ferns.
Gale Robertson:
Oh, okay.
Erika Gardner:
I have a favorite fern and it's the goldback fern. And it's a really cool fern because when you see the backside of the fern, it looks like somebody painted it gold and it really shimmers like gold. And then the cool thing is if you press it to your clothes or to your pants, the gold will come off and it'll leave a leaf imprint of the gold on your clothes. So that's a fun one.
Gale Robertson:
Got it.
Erika Gardner:
It grows in the desert. So it's kind of cool because you're out in the desert and then unexpectedly you see this really cool fern. And most people think ferns grow in the mountains or near the coast, but ferns are really resilient and they can just grow wherever they can. So that's a great question.
Gale Robertson:
It makes you wonder why it has that gold on it, right?
Erika Gardner:
Well, they know. They know why.
Gale Robertson:
Oh they do know. Okay.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. So it's actually like, it's called a waxy exudate. So it's a waxy type of secretion that is coming out of the leaf. And because this leaf grows in the desert it's a really harsh environment and there's not a lot of water or rain. So in order for the plant to not curl up and die and desiccate or dry out, the wax on the back actually keeps the plant from drying out and dying. So it actually protects the plant.
Gale Robertson:
That is so cool. Wow. Nice.
All right, so one more question about this cool collection image that we have. Isabelle and Douglas want to know, what is the thing that looks like a sea urchin?
Erika Gardner:
Oh.
Gale Robertson:
What is the spiky thing on the right? I think they're talking about this one on the front.
Erika Gardner:
Oh, I don't know exactly, but I can tell you that that is definitely a fruit pod. So when the flower goes to seed, usually plants will make a fruit or a protective covering for their seeds. And I know for sure that is definitely a fruit. So when I was saying we have 5 million specimens and they're not all flat, so some of them are bulky fruits or some of them are like the wood, the liana wood. And so we just have all sorts of different fun things in our collection.
Gale Robertson:
That is so cool.
Erika Gardner:
It's sort of a treasure trove.
Gale Robertson:
I'm glad that we got to show that collection picture because yeah, it's pretty striking. And I know someone else said, "5 million?" again in the Q&A, but like you said, it's not just the pressed plants, it's also some specimens that are in jars, and yeah.
So the herbarium is so full of so many cool stories. And I know you were telling us about one that's a little bit related to what we're going through right now. Do you want to share that story with us, Erika?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. So we went into quarantine in March, so that's when we had to leave the museum and we were trying to find things to do at home. But I work with a physical collection, so working from home is really difficult because I'm not in the collection to be there to care for it. So I was trying to think about things in our collection and what we can do. So I learned I can mount specimens from home, so that's what I've been doing and a bunch of other things.
But as I was sitting here thinking about it, I was trying to figure, well, what specimens do we have from a 100 years ago when people were experiencing the Spanish flu? And it hit me that we have these books that this woman when she was ... So her name's Helen Barron and she was born in 1904. And she collected these specimens in Washington, D.C., in Rock Creek Park and surrounding area in Washington, D.C., in 1917 to 1918.
So that would've made her 13 years old to 15 years old when she made these collections. So what she did was she had these notebooks and she would press plants and then she would put the plant in on a page in this notebook. She would write the name of the plant.
So the top picture we have is a dogwood that she collected from Rock Creek Park in 1919. And if you look at the cover of the purple book to the left, that is actually a dogwood flower. So she used her specimen to draw the flower on her notebook.
So she was a teenager when she collected these. And if you think about what happened in 1918 and 1919 was the Spanish flu. People were experiencing the same thing that we're experiencing right now is that they have to stay home. They can't go and have parties with their friends at the park and they can't play in the playgrounds. So they were going through the same thing that we're experiencing.
And so for her, her outlet was to go to Rock Creek Park and to collect these plants and then put them in a little album. Her daughter ended up donating these to the Smithsonian in 2013. And when we received these specimens, these two books from her daughter, we didn't really realize how important these were to us. We accepted them, we said, "Thank you so much. These are great." And then we put them on a shelf and then we kind of forgot about them since 2013.
And then as I was sitting here I realized, oh my goodness, those books. Those books have a really historical value. And you don't really realize that until you realize you're going through the same thing that Helen went through at a different time. So 101 years ago, we have this snapshot in time of somebody collecting plants and then experiencing something that we're really closely experiencing too.
And so it's really interesting that we can look back at the past through her plants. And then we have our own plants here right now that I've pressed and I can look at my plants. And maybe 100 years from now somebody could look at my plants and say, wow, what people went through 100 years ago. And so it's a really interesting comparison.
The May apple there at the bottom that was collected on May 10th, 1919. And my mission was to go find the May apple in Rock Creek Park. I live very close to Rock Creek Park. [inaudible 00:24:49].
Gale Robertson:
[inaudible 00:24:49].
Erika Gardner:
What's that?
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, let me show you where Rock Creek Park is. So this is a map of Washington, D.C., and Rock Creek Park is this big park that cuts through the left third of Washington, D.C. And so Erika's kind of up here in Maryland. I live down here towards more towards the center. But yeah, Rock Creek Park connects our two neighborhoods. So it's kind of cool.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, it's huge. And people don't realize how big of a park this is. And in the middle of the city there is a forest and it's really pretty. It's beautiful.
And when quarantine first happened here in D.C. in March, Mayor Bowser decided to close off a large section of the street for pedestrians and cyclists to use. So no cars are allowed to drive through the park anymore. So it's just this wide, huge forest that people can enjoy.
Because the city is congested and we don't have a lot of room to move around on the sidewalk, so you see people walking in the streets to get around each other because of social distancing. So the mayor decided to open up Rock Creek Park to pedestrians and cyclists only.
And so I've been going to Rock Creek Park a lot. I went there yesterday. I mean, I go there probably four times a week to ride my bike up and down. It's about a 20-mile ride. So it's just a nice escape so that I don't feel trapped in my house all the time.
And so when I realized we had these books from Helen, I saw that she collected the May apple on May 10th, and the Rock Creek Park has been open since April to pedestrians and cyclists. And so I've been going up and down Rock Creek Park and I've been seeing May apples everywhere. And just when I realized we had these books, I realized like, "Oh, wouldn't it be so cool to take a photo of a May apple?"
I don't want to collect from Rock Creek Park because I don't have permission, so I'm not going to take any from there. Unless I was to get permission to from somebody, I would collect one. But because I didn't have permission, I didn't ask. I went on the hunt for it and I couldn't find them anywhere.
But I had seen them all over when it was April. And yet here I was on May 10th in Rock Creek Park and having a difficult time finding them. But I went off a little trail and ended up finding just one clump of them. And so I was really excited that I found one on the same day.
And so she collected hers in 1917 on May 10th, and I took a photo of one on May 10th, 2020. So it's a really cool thing to say like, "Helen Barron found a may apple in 1917 and 102 years later I found one too." So the plant is still there. And it was in flower, too.
So the flower's underneath the leaves. The leaves are like an umbrella and the flower grows under the leaf, so you have to get under the plant to see the flower. It's really pretty. Which that picture little brown spot on her specimen is the flower, but it grows under the leaf. So it's like a little umbrella for the flower, which is really cool.
Gale Robertson:
That is.
Erika Gardner:
What's that?
Gale Robertson:
That is really cool. I think the thing that strikes me the most that I would hope our viewers will remember, that the plants that you collect are a snapshot in time, especially if you add the date on it and where you collected it. That's a record of what you were doing at that time and what was flowering at that time. And that's what the herbarium is all about, right? It's kind of like a library of all these snapshots through time. And that information could be used for scientific study forever.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. And if she had given us more detail about the exact location, because Rock Creek Park is huge ... It's a ginormous park, so it only goes through a little section of D.C. and then into Maryland it's even bigger. So it's hard to know where she was exactly. But if she had put that on the label, like next to Slains, or not Slains, like Pierce Mill ... There's a mill down in Rock Creek. So had she given us a better description of where she was, it would be actually easier to go to that exact point.
But she just said Rock Creek Park, so I went all over Rock Creek Park. So it's kind of cool too to compare the past. Because what if I never found the May apple or I had never seen it? That would be a bad sign that it's not there anymore or it's having a hard time or people have made it not be there anymore.
Gale Robertson:
Right. Right. Well, thank you so much for sharing that amazing story. That's so cool to see a teen in quarantine during the Spanish flu a 100 ago. Now we're also in a time of a pandemic and we're all collecting plants together. And so hopefully this gives us context to our projects.
And so I would love to go ahead and get started with the projects. And so Erika, while you get your setup ready, I am going to share our supply slide. So make sure that you have these things ready. And then like I said before, what you decide to make, just get that paper ready.
If you want to make a herbarium specimen that's similar to the one that Erika showed, you'll need an eight-and-a-half-by-11 piece of paper and a note card for making your label so that you can have the information that you want to associate with your plant. If you want to make a greeting card, you can get your construction paper ready. Fold it if you want to. Cut your paper for your bookmark.
Another thing too, if you want to practice with a plant that maybe is your not so favorite plant, you can do that and then take the techniques that you use that you learn with us today and apply it to your future project. So if you want to just practice gluing the plants and weighing them down, you can do that also. So yeah, so just make sure you have all of these ready.
My daughter, Inez, you guys have probably met her from past programs. She is going to be here too. She's going to make a bookmark. Right, Inez?
Inez:
Mm-hmm.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, she's going to make a bookmark with her pressed plants. Okay, so Erika, how are you doing? Are you ready to.
Erika Gardner:
I'm good. Yeah. Is it there?
Gale Robertson:
Let's see.
Erika Gardner:
Oh yeah, it's still me.
Gale Robertson:
Yep.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah.
Gale Robertson:
There you are.
Erika Gardner:
Let's see. Pause. Oh, there we go. Perfect.
All right, so what I'm going to show you first is my pressed plants coming out of the press. So let's see if I can get this for you. All right, so there's the little press from when we made the press together. So if you just take it apart real easily, you can just take the rubber bands and then open the press up.
The fun thing to do is just go backwards. That way you have everything in order. That way you're not trying to put the paper in the cardboards back together, but ... Oh, there's the one that I said looked like a toothbrush. So there is the plants in this.
Let's see. Focusing. There we go.
So I have these little plants from the last time when I showed you how to make the plant press and how to press them. So I'll put that aside. And then actually there's a really cool one too that we did together. The pink azalea. Remember how I pressed it back upside down or face down. So this is still face down. So if you flip it over, you can see all the little flower parts came out actually really well. So that's the technique for if you press the plant face down.
Gale Robertson:
That's really pretty.
Erika Gardner:
Thank you. And the color stayed too, which is really nice. So I'll put that aside.
And then the one that I'm going to use from the big press, try to see if I can get it in the screen here. I have, let's see, all right, the one that we all did together ... Oh no, that's not the one ... is the Clematis. So this one I also pressed face down. So if you flip it over, there you go.
Gale Robertson:
Came out pretty.
Erika Gardner:
And then the two clovers, too. So I'll use these for today, those specimens. And I'll move my press out of the way.
All right, so the first thing I will show you here is I made the little bookmark that Gale showed you earlier on the slide. So it is really simple to make. Just glue the plants on, but be careful with using glue, because I put too much glue on the petals and now the petals are translucent. So my suggestion is put the glue on the parts that are not going to absorb through the petals. So that one came out better.
And then I put a nice little quote from Dr. Seuss on the back. And so it's a nice little reminder to care about the world from the Lorax. And I used the packing tape to laminate it so I can scratch this as much as I want and guess what? Nothing's going to happen because the tape is protecting the plant. So there's a fun art project.
Another little fun one. You can frame your plants. That's cute. Looks like the sun, but it's not. It's pine needles. Okay.
And then a greeting card. You can make a greeting card, you can say, happy birthday, happy Father's Day, thank you. Thank you cards. So that's fun.
But I'm going to show you how to make a herbarium specimen. So with a 8-by-11 sheet, what we do when we make an our herbarium specimen is we have a label and you can write whatever you want on your label. So on here, I already made my label because I figure you don't want to watch me write with my handwriting. So I just made a little fun label that I'll put here on the bottom. It Has my name on it.
I'm calling this my number one plant, but it's not my number one. I'm just saying that for you guys. But I might actually ... I don't even know what number I'm on anymore. I'm like 2,000 or something. But anyways, for this project, this is my first plant.
I have the date on here. It says May 30th, even though today is not May 30th. I put May 30th on there because that's the date that I collected the specimen with you guys the first time. So that's where ... There we go. Oh [inaudible 00:35:30]. Okay, so that's where May 30th is coming from.
So there's also information about, I said, "Growing on a street sign on the corner of my street across from the bus stop. Bright big purple flowers. A vine. Full sun. Next to iris plants." So you can write whatever you want, but the more information you put is just ... It's better. So if you have GPS coordinates, you can put those on.
So I'm going to put the clematis. This is the plant. You want to show as many features as possible. So the back is definitely different from the front. If I had a second flower, I would've actually put one face down and one face up to show the back and the front of the specimen. But since I only have one, I'm going to show the front of the flower.
So you'll arrange it where you want it. And so I think that looks pretty good. That's a good spot. So you'll just use glue. My words of advice for glue is less is better. So the more glue you use, more damage you're actually going to do to the paper and to the plant. So you really don't need a lot of glue. So I tend to not go crazy with the glue on the label because if you put all this glue on, the paper will actually buckle and then you'll be really sad that it did not come out as well.
So what you'll do is you'll find a spot on the corner. It doesn't have to be exactly on flush. It can be near it. I do one side first so that it contacts and then I tend to then go up from there so that I get all the air bubbles out and that, if glue does come out, you can use a wet tissue to take the extra glue off. So there's the label.
If you're seeing that it's kind of bumpy, I'm going to use the coaster because why not? You can kind of use it to push the glue around a little to get the air bubbles out. You can see some glue came out here at the top, but that's okay. And then if you're going to-
Gale Robertson:
I have a question.
Erika Gardner:
Uh-huh.
Gale Robertson:
So if people are making the bookmark similar to the one that you showed, do they still need to glue the plant? Did you glue your plant before you put the lamination on it?
Erika Gardner:
Oh, good question. Yes. So when I did that ... We'll go to that. I put the glue on the plant first. And these are actually little flowers from a bigger plant. They were falling off as I was moving the plant around. So I was like, okay, I'm just going to use the little individual flowers instead of the whole thing. So I was plucking the flowers off and then putting them on.
I used tweezers for that because these parts are little so it's really easy to pick the parts up with a tweezer and lay them down. Or holding the plant with the tweezers and putting glue on actually is really useful. So if you're holding the plant with tweezers, it actually is very easy to put glue on instead of... Well, this plant's really big. But if it's a small plant and it's hard to find a spot to hold it while you're putting glue, the tweezers come in handy for that.
So while I was doing that, I glued that plant down and that then I put the weight on top so then I could glue this plant down. And then as I was moving down, I was putting the weights on to make sure that the plant would contact with the paper and then I put the tape on after the glue dried. So yeah, glue it first. Because if you try to put the tape on without gluing the plants, the plants, sometimes they'll get static and they'll stick to the tape or they'll move and then you'll be really upset. So just try to stick them to the paper first.
Gale Robertson:
Okay, great. So for the viewers that are going to use tape to laminate their plants, you definitely want to glue your plants first. And so Erika, you're going to show us how to glue them, right?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Great.
Erika Gardner:
Yep. So here I'm going to do the plant. And oh, the heading of your label, that was just ... I just came up with that fast. A lot of herbaria you can see ... I'll give you back the specimen. It says Plants of Mexico on this one. Others actually say the name of the herbarium. So you can write, "Collection of your name," or whatever you want. So this is free. You can write whatever you want there. It's a free interpretation of what you want your specimen to say.
So if you're going to put glue on your specimen, like I said, the same thing with the paper, using less is better. And at the Smithsonian, this is actually a fun fact, we actually do not use glue on our plants. And I'll show you that in a second. We sew all of our plant specimens or we use tape.
Gale Robertson:
Oh yeah, someone had asked the question when we were looking at Helen Barron's about whether that was tape on those plants.
Erika Gardner:
So just the points that are going to contact with paper. So you don't need to go crazy with it. You do the outlines. So if you really want, you could do a dot on each little spot. You don't need a ton because the plant is going to stick. And this plant, it's really cool because it's fuzzy. All right, so when you have it, how much glue you want, just find where you want to put it and then lay it down.
And so if you're noticing that parts of them are sticking up and not contacting the paper, you can put weights down. And I have more weights, but I just grabbed two. Or you could use your hands to push the plant down. And so that is the technique. So like I was saying, we don't actually glue our specimens. And the reason, I'll show you that in 10 seconds. So that is my finished herbarium sheet.
So you could just keep adding. Okay, so scientists, we like to keep one species per sheet so that way it's just the one species. So you can add different species to this. So adding this would be a big no-no in the science world, but in the art world you can do that. But in science we tend to keep it only the same species on one sheet. So that that's just for you all to know.
So if I show you our herbarium sheet again, so here it is, none of this part, no parts of the plants have glue on it because the cool thing about our specimens is if a scientist realizes that they want to see the back of this flower, but if it has glue on it, they can't take it off and look at it. So if they really want to see it, and I'll do this for you guys because I can, we can actually take these straps off. And you can take them all off and then you can take this whole piece of this plant off and turn it around to look at it.
Gale Robertson:
Oh wow.
Erika Gardner:
And so then what I would do is I would come back and put new straps on. And actually some of our scientists have asked us to remount the specimen because the part that they wanted to see is actually on the other side. So we have done it a few times.
It's not very common because you can see how many flowers are on this specimen, there's a lot to look at. But if it's one where if it's like this and they really need to see the back of the specimen, we have a problem because I glued it and there's only one. So if we had multiple flowers on here, we can show the different sides.
And it goes for the same with leaves. Leaves are very important. So here you can see these leaves are lighter than these ones. That's because that's the back of the leaves and that's the front of the leaves.
Gale Robertson:
Oh yeah. So it sounds like there's different ways. The purpose of mounting or there's the ways you mount it depends on how you're going to use it, whether it's for scientific study or for art.
Erika Gardner:
Right.
Gale Robertson:
We had a question about, from Kevin, Sophia and Ernesto, are certain types of paper better to keep the plants in good condition?
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, good question. So this actually, this paper is really thick. You can see it kind of sounds like cardboard. This is a special paper that we buy. It's called rag, R-A-G, paper because it has cotton rag in the paper. And so it's pH neutral so there's no acid.
Same with the label here on the specimen. It does not have any acid in it. So a lot of printer paper that is sold now does not have acid in it, which is really good. Which means that your paper will not yellow over time.
So this one that I just did for you, you guys, this is our printer paper at home. This is not as thick but it'll still do for at-home purposes. So like I was saying, if you want to keep adding more sheets of printer paper and specimens, you could basically have a book, but just a collection of your specimens on top of each other. So that is how we actually file our specimens is one on top of the other like that.
Gale Robertson:
Okay. Nice. And then we have another question because I know that we're using packing tape to laminate our plants. But if someone has a laminating machine, will that change the color of the plant? Because I know there's some hot laminating machines and then there's some cool ones and I don't know which one. Do you have any experience with laminating with a machine for plants?
Erika Gardner:
So good question. I used to work at a place that had a library with a collection, a book library, and they would collect plants from the garden because there's a living garden on the grounds. And then they would turn those into bookmarks and then give them out to people. And they used a laminator, a real one. And I never noticed anything different from the plants being laminated that way. They look just fine. So yeah, I didn't notice if they're ... I wonder if I still have one.
Gale Robertson:
Great. And then someone, Bridget is asking, do you have any advice for mounting ferns? They seem tough to glue.
Erika Gardner:
Actually those ones are fun. They look great when you mount them. Just patience. Just take patience. If you're using glue, I know, so for here, these little parts on this plant tend to ... They look similar to ... They're not a fern, but they have similar qualities where there's a lot of little spiky parts coming off of the leaves.
So if you're using glue ... I'm going to close this cause I do not want to put glue on this. If you're using glue you can just put a dab, just a little tiny dot on each little, we call them pinnae on the fern. And so you just put a little tiny dot. And then the rachis is the main mid-rib of the ferns. So you can just put a little bit on the rachis and then on the pinna or pinnules of the ferns.
So if you are just careful and just take your time with it and if it's popping off, just use the weights to put it down. But ferns mount really well. They're really pretty. Yeah. Should I flip back?
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. And while you flip back, I'm going to show what Inez and I have done. Because we wanted to make a bookmark and so our plant is drying underneath the glue and we use our weights to hold it down. We put a little bit too much glue since this is our first time doing it. And so there's some glue seeping out. But like Erika said, we were wiping it, trying to wipe it before the glue dries.
And Inez is also working on another herbarium-like specimen so that she can label it with some of the information that we have like the date, your name. She'll probably call it Inez's collection. I don't know. I'll have to ask her. And then where we collected it from.
We love seeing your finished projects that you do along with us during the program or that you do after the program using the techniques that you learned with us. And so when you are done and you want to share it with us, please send your photos to our website or to our email. I'm going to share that screen with you. Our herbarium. Here we are. So send photos of your plant projects to NMNH-FamilyPrograms@si.edu. It's always so fun to see what you create with us.
Okay, so I know we're running a little bit late, I know it's 11:49. But there are a couple of questions that people have that, Eric, I just wanted to make sure that we ask. David and Marcello are asking, do you have specimens of plants that are now thought to be extinct?
Erika Gardner:
Yes, awesome question definitely. In botany we don't say things are extinct. We say they're presumed extinct because plants have this awesome thing of seed banking their seeds in the soil. So it's not that they're completely gone. It's that maybe they're still around and there's a chance that they could come back.
But there are instances that we do know where a plant is definitely not coming back is when somebody puts a mall on top of the habitat where a plant was grown or growing. So we do have a lot of examples. Well, not a lot. I don't want to scare you. But there are quite a big number of examples of plants that are extirpated, which means that we can't find them anymore from the wild. And we do have specimens where people actually use the specimens to go back to those locations to find them and they can't.
So there's a really good example of that in Chicago. I forget the name of the plant right now, but there is a plant in Chicago that used to grow near the lake and now that all the development has happened, researchers have been going there since I think the 1940s to relocate it and nobody's been able to see it since.
So there are these stories of people trying to go find them and sometimes they do appear, some miracle. There's a story in California where one of my friends was on the hunt for a plant and actually they found it in some random location. So it's kind of cool that if you look, you might find it. But then also if it's say, a pond, and the pond is not there anymore, it's probably gone forever.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. That's really interesting. I mean, it's similar to what you did. You went out to the Rock Creek Park to see if that May apple was still there and that you could find it. And that was really cool that you found it on the same date that it was found 100 years ago. Yeah.
Sophie wants to know, how do you store leaves that are even bigger than the standard page size?
Erika Gardner:
Oh, that's such an awesome question. So we have to cut them up into like a puzzle. So you cut them to different sheets and then you have to write on the sheet, like sheet one of two, sheet ... So however many sheets the plant takes up, that's how many times you say this, how many sheets there are for this leaf. And so they'll all be stacked together and then you can kind of put them together like a puzzle to see how big the leaf is. And there is one where this guy collected a ginormous leaf and he actually has I think 11 or 10 herbarium specimens that you would line up just to see how big the leaf is.
Gale Robertson:
That is really cool. It's like you have to piece the puzzle back together when you're in the herbarium.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, but it's really rare.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. Kevin wants to know, can you press a cactus?
Erika Gardner:
Yes, you can. You totally can. So I've pressed a cactus before because I used to work in the desert and it can be dangerous. You have to use gloves so that the spines don't poke you and you have to use a knife because you have to cut the cactus pad in half and then you have to open it up.
And the inside the cactus is very gelatinous. And so yeah, either you can scoop it out so you can scrape it or you can put salt, and the salt will take all the water out, or you can use the highly coveted rubbing alcohol to pull the water out as well, but that's a hot commodity these days. So salt works really well, but being patient.
The gelatinous part, if you put it on the newspaper, will actually stick to the paper. But that's okay because you're not going to see that part when you mount your cactus. And so we have a lot of cacti in our collection and maybe if you go online you can check that out. Under our search for specimens on our online database you can put Cactaceae and see all of our cactus specimens, yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Great. And actually Hyvee wants to know, do you have a dichotomous key that you recommend for identifying plants or tree leaves?
Erika Gardner:
Oh wow, that is a great question because a lot of people are now using apps like iNaturalist or Seek. So a lot of people are not attuned to using a dichotomous key, but depending on the region where you are from or where you are, there might be a good localized state dichotomous key books. So there's one for the state of Virginia, I know Arizona, California.
These botanists work really hard putting these books together. But the problem with books is the moment it's published, we are constantly learning about science, that it's actually somewhat outdated. It's not that it's not useful, it's just that we're constantly adding to how much we know about plants and their descriptions that it's constantly changing too through time.
So sometimes you go find them on the internet, like e-floras, they're called E. California has a e-flora, which is constantly being updated and is amazing.
But the Flora of North America is this huge volume trying to get all of the plants in North America described and in a dichotomous key that so if you're North America you can use it. It's not completely finished because there's so many botanists collaborating to make this volume. So some are finished and ready to go. Some of them are still being worked on. So it's just huge collaborate. So Flora of North America is a good resource.
Gale Robertson:
Great. And I'm glad, Erika, that you mentioned the Seek app by iNaturalist. I had a slide for it, but I don't have it from ... We had it from the previous program. But what I will do in the post-program email that I send to everyone, I will include that. And so it's really. Nice, they use image recognition technology to help you identify plants when you're out on your nature walks or around your neighborhood. So I'll definitely include that because that is a nice way. But those books are also really nice too [inaudible 00:55:29].
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. So dichotomous keys are more science and so you're learning the language of botany, which is Latin, but also the terminology for plants is very different from animal terminology or even human anatomy. We have very specialized names for a part. When I was talking about the fern, the rachis and the pinnules, those are very specific terms for ferns. And so you'll learn terminology for plant groups, if you look at dichotomous keys.
Gale Robertson:
Great. So Sophie and Ernesto want to know, where do you store the specimens?
Erika Gardner:
All of them?
Gale Robertson:
And I wonder if it's specimens in the museum or, let's see, because I know that you had showed those cabinets.
Erika Gardner:
So a large portion of the collection that is mounted is actually on the National Mall at the museum. So we store it. We have two floors that are dedicated to just our herbarium specimens at the museum. They're behind the scenes. The public doesn't see it.
But we also have an off-site facility where we put all the specimens that we don't have the time to mount right now. They're kind of not our high priority, a little lower priority. But one day they'll get mounted and eventually brought back to the museum into the main collection. There's a lot at our off-site. We have a lot of specimens that are not mounted and it's kind of crazy.
And then we store them in the cabinets. If it's alcohol collections, those are stored off-site because we're not allowed to have alcohol collections on the National Mall. And if they're woody, those are also at the museum, too. We have special cabinets for those.
Gale Robertson:
And then Joshua wants to know, do you have a recommended plant to press?
Erika Gardner:
All of them. No, just kidding. So recommended? The azalea came out really well. So I'd say yeah, I mean, just experiment and see what works. If it's bulky, it's going to take a little longer to dry and be a little awkward in your press. But really flat things like little flowers like the clematis came out really well and the color stayed, too, which is pretty cool. But yeah, I'd just say, just experiment and try and have fun with it.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah, I know that ever since we've done our program together, I can't not walk around and think about what plant I want to press. That's kind of where I'm at right now. It's like, "Ooh, I wonder what that would look like."
Erika Gardner:
Yeah.
Gale Robertson:
Carol wants to know, can you press a dandelion seed head?
Erika Gardner:
Oh, good question. I don't know. Okay, I'm going to say yes, you can press anything. But the scary thing is going to be when you open the newspaper, they're going to fly away.
So we have a big problem with this in our museum when people collect, because dandelions are in the sunflower family. And so a lot of plants in the sunflower family do that. What the dandelion does where it makes a little puffball and the seeds fly away. There's a lot of groups in the sunflower family that will do that. So when we go to mount something unexpectedly open the newspaper and this puff flies everywhere like, "No."
So you have to be really careful that if you really want to preserve that, you have to be very careful with opening your paper and making sure that you don't breathe on it. Because when you breathe on it's, it goes everywhere. So it's not going to come out perfect. It is going to disassociate from the head of the receptacle of the plant. So yeah, just be careful.
Gale Robertson:
Be ready when you open up your press.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:59:18].
Gale Robertson:
So there's a couple more questions before we end up our show. These are really, really great, interesting questions. And then there was a comment from Mary Moore who said that she caught poison ivy from the NMNH herbarium in 1970 when she was an intern there.
Erika Gardner:
Oh no, that's terrible. Oh, I'm sorry.
Gale Robertson:
That's interesting that it's was still viable enough to ...
Erika Gardner:
Well, there's one really scary plant that grows in Australia. They call it the gympie-gympie bush because it was found in Gympie, Australia. That's where the name comes from. It's in the stinging nettle family. And the hairs are ... They are so ... Oh, they're bad. I mean, if you've ever been stung by stinging nettle, this is like 100 times worse than being stung by stinging nettle that even the herbarium specimen 100 years later can get you. And they say that the stinging is so bad it can last for years to decades in your skin. So yeah, some plants are still able to attack you postmortem.
Gale Robertson:
That sounds like another program that we should do, How Plants Attack.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. Like zombie plants?
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. Jane wants to know, how do we store our pressed flowers to keep them safe?
Erika Gardner:
Oh, good question. So if you're finished with them in the press, what you can do is you could move ... And I should have shown this to you. I should have had one ready for you. But when you take them out of your press, you're going to move your newspapers out, which I took two of them out already. So I'll just show you real quickly. Here's one newspaper and then here's another newspaper.
So what I do, if I'm just finished with the press and I want to move the specimens out, but I still want to keep using my press, I will take two cardboards and then I'll take all the newspapers. So inside the newspapers I have some plants in there. Oh, there they are.
So what I'll do is I'll take one cardboard, all the newspapers, so you can have a little stack of newspapers and they can all sit on top, lay on top of each other because they're all dried and pressed. And then take another cardboard. And if you want, you can use a string. So instead of having the hard parts of your press, you don't need those anymore.
So you just take two cardboards and all of your newspapers in between and then wrap them however you want with a string or a rubber band and put those aside. That way if this gets bumped, the newspapers aren't going to fly out. They're not going to ... I can't bend this. I mean, I can if I really wanted to, but if something goes on top your plants aren't going to get crushed.
So this is a great way to actually just take two of your cardboards out, all the newspapers in, wrap them, and set them aside. And then you can keep using your press. So you just keep adding newspaper and cardboard to your press. So you have basically finished product and then your press to keep going.
Gale Robertson:
So you could still use the same materials that you use for the press for those.
Erika Gardner:
And that's what we do at the museum. So when researchers give us their specimens, they give us their specimens in between two pieces of cardboard and all their newspapers and their newspapers are bigger. They're not tiny. So then we take that bundle and then we go to mount them.
Gale Robertson:
Great. Awesome. Okay, one more question. Could you recommend a resource that takes the viewer step by step from collection of the specimen to pressing the specimen like works of art on herbarium sheets? Do you have any video resource or anything like that?
Erika Gardner:
No. No. Oh my gosh, no. Oh my gosh, you stumped me. I'm stumped. No. Maybe YouTube. YouTube might have a resource on there. I've never seen anything. Goodness, you got me.
Gale Robertson:
Maybe that's something we can look for together.
Erika Gardner:
Yeah. And our botanical illustrator, Alice Tangerini, she uses these specimens for all the artwork that she does for new plant descriptions. So she'll use the specimen to make the art for the scientific part.
Gale Robertson:
Yeah. Great. Well, viewers, thank you so much for all of those amazing questions. A lot of really great conversations with us. We are at the end of the program. And thank you for sticking with us for this long.
And thank you, Erika, for inspiring us and for introducing us to new ways to explore nature through collecting, pressing, and preserving plants. Like I said, I can't go on my walks anymore. But Sophie also mentioned when she goes on walks, there aren't any plants flowering that much anymore. And so it's like we have to wait for that next season or ...
Erika Gardner:
Or just be on the lookout because some things will surprise you. There are late bloomers and things bloom late in the season. So if you just keep your eyes out, it's not over. Don't get defeated because there are things. And if you look really close to the ground, you might see things.
Gale Robertson:
That's true. Those little things. All right. Thank you Erika.
While we close out I wanted to share with you a really exciting virtual summer series that we have coming up in July. It's called Natural History Summer Explorations. And so we will have two different program weeks with different natural-science-based themes and with programs we're going to have a suite of daily live webinars, videos, activities, and projects.
These programs are free and registration is going to open on June 22nd. And so if you want to be notified for when registration opens, please email us at YouthNMNH@si.edu so that we can put you on the list and let you know when these are posted.
They are designed for students that are entering grades three through seven, and you'll see that the themes that we're going to be covering are deep sea ocean adaptations and we're going to be talking about paleo art. So if you're interested in joining us for that in July, we'd love to have you.
I also wanted to revisit the resources that we shared at the beginning, the statement from the Secretary about the current events and then the resource about Talking about Race.
Also, caregivers, we do have a short survey for you to fill out at the end of this program. It's always really helpful for you to give as specific feedback as possible because we are trying to figure out how to plan programs over the summer and how we can provide programs digitally to you through the fall. So any feedback that you give us is very, very helpful.
Thank you so much for joining us today. I know that we went over our time, but we had some really great conversations with Erika. You're always so fun to have on the show and to share with us your love of botany and plants. And I know that in our family we are definitely more interested and we have plants on the brain.
Erika Gardner:
Not a problem.
Gale Robertson:
So thank you you all for joining us and we hope to see you soon online with us for our future family programs. Bye.
Erika Gardner:
Thank you.
Gale Robertson:
Bye, Erika.
Erika Gardner:
Bye.
