BOT ANISTS ALL

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 3 (Supplement)

BOT ANISTS ALL

By TINKERBELL

How did you get on with your flower pressing? Now that you have found how interesting the-work can be, Tinkerbell thought that you might like to do a little bit of real botany.

Tt is certainly quite as interesting, if not more so, to collect plants as to collect stamps. In the same manner as a stamp collection widens your geographical and political knowledge, a wellplanned collection of dried, pressed plants ■will give you a much wider understanding of your country's soil and flora.. A collcction of dried plants is called a ■herbarium. The essential thin? Ie to gather the 'widest possible assortment of wild flowers. One of the requisites is a botanical case (see fig. 1), preferably one provided with two compartments, so that you keep the frailest plants separately. Fig. - shows a botanist's net, which is indispensable when you are gathering water plants for your collection, You will also need a packet of pins and a few slips of paper. As you gather the plants, number them and make notes concerning the site, light, soil and date, and pin the slips to the respective plants. Determining the name of the plant, etc., is best loft until you get home. In fig. 3 you see an old knitting needle, the point of which has been broken off. It is to be used for spreading out the leaves and flowers when the plants arc lieini pressed. Xever apply your fingers to the delicate parts of the plants. Fig. 4 shows a prose that is easily made from two thick pieces of

I wood, two strips of metal provided with i hole?, and two double-wincred screws, j However, you can very well manage at I fir«=t with just two pieces of wood and 1 a couple of bricks.