engleski

A new plant preservation method using epoxy resin

The results achieved at the Macedonian Museum of Natural History in Skopje encouraged us to experiment with epoxy resin in preserving herbarium specimens. The Botany Department of the above Museum owns a collection of plants in polyester resins, but the information on the preservation methodology are not available and do not exist in writing. With the aim of establishing a similar collection that would primarily serve for presentation purposes, we collected information for several months during 2008, after which we started with the experiments. We opted to work with epoxy resin as it is less toxic, more transparent and solid, and releases less heat when hardening compared to polyester resins. Our primary intention was to preserve fresh plant material by coating or immersing it in resin, but all of our experiments with fresh plants failed due to the chemical reactions caused by saps. For this reason, we continued doing experiments exclusively with well dried herbarium specimens and plant parts. Despite some negligible technical issues we dealt with as we gradually developed the methodology, the results were outstanding. This plant preservation method offers completely new possibilities, particularly for presentation purposes, but also for conserving herbarium material and keeping plants’ natural appearance and colour as long as possible.

plant preservation ; epoxy resin ; Museum

nije evidentirano