Posted: May 8th, 2015

Herbarium Specimens & the Plant Growing Project

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

There is two parts to the Portfolio: herbarium specimens & the plant growing project

Herbarium: you need to prepare & mount two herbarium specimens which must be either in flower or have fruit and when mounted they should be labelled and presented correctly. You may include more specimens if you like but indicate which two specimens you want to be marked. Herbarium specimens should be mounted on only one side of heavy weight A3 cartridge papers and then protected from damage by attaching covering flaps made from fine translucent tracing paper. View the Herbarium PowerPoint slides for details on how to press and present your work.

Plant-growing project: you need to grow a medicinal herb species from its germinating seed stage – preferably right through to its flowering stage. If your chosen plant has small seeds then you need to also grow and illustrate a large seed, such as a broad bean, in order to show in detail the germination stages of a typical plant. You do not need to follow the growth stages of this large seeded plant, as you can then focus on the growth of your chosen herb instead, unless of course you decide to use the broad bean as your chosen species for the portfolio.

You need to make large clear labelled drawings of your chosen plant, showing its key growing stages and it final adult flowering stage. Whilst original live-plant drawings are always preferred, supplementary drawings of specific features (eg dissected flower structure) may be copied from drawings/pictures in reputable books or online sites, but in such cases, besides indicating that you drew this picture, the original author must also be clearly referenced next to the picture. You may also take photographs of the growing stages to support your work but note that only photographs that are clear and in focus should be used.

Computer printed information should be included to discuss points such as characteristics of the plants family, habitat and distribution, medicinal uses, historical aspects, methods of pollination etc. If your plant does not reach the flowering stage in time then you may find pictures of this stage in books or online which you can draw in order to represent the final adult/flowering stage of growth (see marking criteria), but make sure you correctly reference this drawing by including a citation (author and year) next to the picture and then the full reference details in the main reference list.

Information on your growing plant (botanical drawings, photographs and written information) are best mounted on one side of A3 cartridge paper. This can be in the form of two A4 papers if you like or an arrangement of neatly cut out commuter annotated labels or pictures etc. Note that the A3 mounting cartridge papers for this part of your portfolio do not require covering tracing paper flaps.If you prefer you may include your main written material, detailing the growing stages, discussion etc, on A4 sheets of paper. Don’t forget to include a content page and a reference list.

Important note: For obvious reasons the two plants used in the example growing projects available on Blackboard [(Matricaria recutita (German Chamomile) & Thymus vulgaris (Thyme)] cannot be the plants that you choose for your plant growing project.