ICBN has specified certain rules and principles is order to facilitate the study of plants by botanists. It helps in correct positioning of any newly discovered organism through proper identification and nomenclature.
Given below is the taxonomic hierarchy, which is used while classifying any plant Kingdom-Plantae
Division-phyta
Class-ae
Order-ales
Family-eae/ceae
Genus-First name of organism usually carrying Latin word and written in italics.
Species-Second word of scientific name, also written in italics.
For preservation of plant material on a herbarium sheet the following tools and steps are required to be followed.
Tools Digger and pruning knife, sickle with long handle, vasculum, polythene bags, magazines or newspapers, blotting papers, plant press, field notebook, herbarium sheets, glue, labels, small transparent polythene bags.
One can prepare herbarium sheets by cutting papers of size $29 \times 41.5 \mathrm{~cm}\left(11 \frac{1}{2} \times 16 \frac{1}{2}\right)^{\prime \prime}$.
The preparation of a herbarium specimen required following steps
(i) Collection of plant or plant parts.
(ii) Pressing It involves the spreading and pressing of collected specimen over a newspaper so as to preserve its all parts.
(iii) Drying It involves the drying of the specimen between the folds of newspaper.
(iv) Poisoning Antifungal (dipping in $2 \% \mathrm{HgCl}_2$ ) and pesticidal (DDT) treatment of the dried specimen.
(v) Mounting It involves mounting of the specimen over a herbarium sheet.
(vi) Labelling and identification of the dried specimen are the last steps, while preparing a herbarium sheet.
Tools/equipments required for the collection of herbarium specimens are as follows
(i) A tin or aluminium container of $50 \times 30 \times 15 \mathrm{~cm}$ size.
(ii) Collection bags/plastic/polythene bags.
(iii) Digger for digging roots.
(iv) Magnifying lens of at least 10X magnification.
(v) Field note book.
A preserved plant material on the herbarium sheet may provide information about the family, genus, species, date of collection, area of collection, etc., for taxonomic studies.
The difference between flora, fauna and vegetation are as below
Flora | Fauna | Vegetation |
---|---|---|
Flora is a plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring indigenous native plant life. | Fauna is total number of animals found in a particular region at particular time. | It refers to the plant forms of region. It is broad and general term used for a plant forms, which does not include particular taxa or any botanical characteristics. |
The terms exotic and endemic refers to
Exotic Species | Endemic Species |
---|---|
Any species of a plant living in any other place except its native place is said to be exotic species. e.g., Eichhornia crassipes is native of Amazonian basin but it was introduced in India, so it is a exotic species in India. |
Endemic species are restricted to a particular area, e.g., Rauwolfia serpentina is found only in India, so it is an endemic species found only in India. |