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Herbarium Sheets

Features of the Darwin specimen sheets

Collected plant specimens are preserved for the future by pressing and then drying them. They are then carefully mounted on to paper so that the features that distinguish the particular plant can be seen; some of these, for example miniscule hairs and glands, are only revealed under magnification.

When Henslow received Darwin’s plants in Cambridge, he mounted them on to about 950 herbarium sheets and added information to them. You can explore one of these sheets in detail below by dragging your mouse across the image.

The Plant

'Mus.Henslow'. Henslow used this abbreviation for his herbarium specimens as they were parts of his own Museum, which included many types of botanical materials as well as the sheets.

Packets contain small parts of the specimen broken during the original mounting or additional material such as extra fruits or seeds; they have often been added subsequently to hold damaged parts of the original specimen.

The barcode is a unique machine-readable number to identify the sheet within the Cambridge University Herbarium.

Illustrations were added to sheets mainly by J. D. Hooker of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew when he identified and described the specimens.

Determination Slips (Det. slips) are added to herbarium sheets by botanists to indicate their own views on the identification and name of the plant on the sheet. Mostly they record a different name from the one originally given.

Henslow recorded information on the sheet covering some or all of the following: the name (if known) handwritten; a printed location such as “South America”; a handwritten location such as “Charles Island”; the date of collection; the name of the collector usually printed as “C. Darwin”; a number Henslow used in his own collection.