Pressed Plants: Making a Herbarium Paperback – February 10, 2023

This small, simple little book is the best book on creating a herbarium I have yet to read. It far exceeds any of the more complicated books and also any articles online. It's an excellent, excellent book and I have recommended it to other people.

What a great book to have or give for the garden-lover! It is clear that the author loves the world of flowers and has created a book that helps you not only bring this love into your home, but also a way to keep the memories for a lifetime and help botany research as well! I'm already thinking of garden lovers I know to give this book as a gift - add a notebook or some tools of the trade and you can start anyone, young or old or a new hobby! This book steps you through the process of documenting, collecting, and mounting on your own. I loved this book!

Pressed Plants is a comprehensive beginner friendly guide with tutorials for getting started preserving and cataloguing a person herbarium/plant collection by Linda P.J. Lipsen. Released 10th Feb 2023 by the Royal British Columbia Museum, it's 96 pages and will be available in paperback and ebook formats.The cataloguing and organization of plant material into a cohesive (and correctly identified) herbarium is admittedly exotic, academic, and (some would say) tweedy hobby. It's also deeply steeped in adventure, history, and exploration. Early explorers were hardy and fearless and raced to find and bring back heretofore unknown species. As a result, botanical material was crated and shipped wholesale (generally unidentified) back to be bought and curated into private and public collections worldwide. This book is written for hobbyist collectors and for building readers' private collections, but there are flashes of the same adventure and wanderlust in the author's instruction included here.The book is arranged logically, with chapters divided thematically: building a field kit and collecting tools (including a good overview on sourcing and evaluating what to get and where), collecting plant material, pressing & drying, mounting, preserving & organizing, and identifying specimens. The text is enhanced throughout with tips set apart by identifying icons indicating reusable/recycling ideas, tips and tricks, and checklists for fieldwork. The text is enhanced throughout by simple line drawings and graphics rendered by Derek Tan. Although quite simple, they enhance and inform the text. The author has also included a solid bibliography to get collectors started with ID and classification, as well as a cross referenced index (not provided in the ARC for review).Four stars. It's an admittedly niche book, but I heartily recommend it to readers who enjoy academic collections and who really enjoy seeing collections of *stuff* being arranged and catalogued and ordered. Beautifully done and well illustrated. This would also be an excellent choice for public or school library, activity groups, maker's groups, smallholders and similar.Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I have a bad habit of collecting hobbies and after reading this book I want to make my own herbarium. Linda P.J. Lipsen is such an inviting writer. She wrote and described every single thing a person needs to get started in the field. Not only that but Derek Tan’s illustrations are clear and easy to follow. Lipsen starts from the beginning and goes through the entire process of supplies, searching, documenting, collecting, pressing and displaying your plants. She has three separate symbols she uses in the margins to further break down areas in the process that might be confusing.I dare you to not press at least one plant after reading this book.