Herbarium

Herbarium maintains a reference collection of the living plants for the comparative study of fossil material. The Herbarium consists of four sections: (1) General collection of dried plants mounted on herbarium sheets, (2) Xylarium - collection of woods and their thin sections, (3) Sporothek - collection of pollen and spore slides and polleniferous material and (4) Carpothek - collection of fruits, seeds etc. A herbarium houses collections of scientifically arranged preserved plant materials. These specimens are the key to our knowledge of plants and serve as a permanent reference to the plant life on earth. They document a wealth of information on such things as variation, local names, uses, distribution and ecology. They also serve as a definitive reference collection for the identification of newly collected plants and the correct application of names.

The herbarium of the institute functions as complementary source of information for palaeobotanical and palynological researches. Fossils occur as leaves, cuticle, pollen, spores, fruits, seed and wood and generally possess diagnostic characters, by which they are identified. Their comparative study with modern equivalents help to infer their botanical affinity. The herbarium of Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeobotany, Lucknow was established in the year 1959. Since the beginning, herbarium has regularly been enriched through field collections and national and international exchange programmes. At the start the herbarium had 537 plant specimens and 559 pollen slides, which has now come to an astounding figure of 51,472 specimens (excluding replicates). This includes the plant material collected from Darjeeling and Sikkim in Indo-Japanese expedition with the scientists of Tokyo University in the year 1960. As well as, the field areas range from West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Kerala (Silent Valley), etc. The collection of extant plant material from different parts of India and abroad made by dignitaries like J.F. Duthie (1896) , R.R.Stewart (1917), and K.N. Kaul (1934), Professor Birbal Sahni (1940), O.A. Hoeg (1952), A.L. Takhtajan (1966) are the valuable assets of the BSIP herbarium.