The story of is the story of how five centuries of plant preservation evolved from a private "winter garden" into a high-tech global science. Originally published in 1989 by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , it has become the definitive "bible" for managing the world’s preserved plant collections. The Origins: From "Dry Gardens" to Data Banks
The handbook itself was created to standardize these centuries of practice. Across its editions, it has tracked the massive technological shifts in botany: The Herbarium Handbook - The University of Chicago Press The Herbarium Handbook
The practice began in the 1500s with Italian physician . To teach students about plants when they weren't in bloom, he created the hortus siccus (dry garden) by pressing plants between paper to preserve them. For centuries, these specimens were glued into bound books. It wasn't until Carl Linnaeus in the 18th century that botanists began keeping specimens on loose, re-orderable sheets, allowing collections to be organized like a library. The Evolution of the Handbook The story of is the story of how