A glimpse into the Philippine National Herbarium

Posted on: October 27, 2021 | National Museum of the Philippines

As we are nearing the conclusion of this year’s Museum and Galleries Month, your #NationalMuseumPH would like to give you a glimpse of the Philippine National Herbarium (PNH) in a short video showcasing our main functions as the custodian of our natural heritage.

Take a look at how the team of technical staff from the Botany and National Herbarium Division ensures that the botanical specimens are properly managed and conserved in the PNH.

Several measures are being taken to ensure the integrity of herbarium specimens to last for many generations. Freeze-drying is the process where mounted specimens will be exposed to extremely low temperatures which will kill insects and pests that may be found in the specimens. This is a preliminary step before placing the specimens inside the metal compactor cabinets in the National Museum of Natural History for arrangement and distribution.

The arrangement of specimens in a compactor cabinet is also a crucial consideration for maintaining the herbarium. At present, our researchers are making sure that herbarium specimens are properly distributed in each cabinet, following the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group system of classification for flowering plants.

Databasing of collections is significant in herbarium management most especially now that the PNH is gearing towards the digitization of our herbarium collections. Digitization can widen the access of the public to the once limited herbarium data which could be utilized for both educational and scientific purposes.

If you have inquiries regarding collections of the PNH, please send your official requests to pnh@nationalmuseum.gov.ph . Otherwise, book a tour through this website to view some of the exhibited collections of the PNH.

Text and video by the NMP Botany and National Herbarium Division