Pressed Plants and Paper Dreams: The Origins of the Herbarium
Botanical Sheets from Eufloria’s Herbarium
If you’ve ever opened an old book and found a flower flattened between its pages, congratulations—you’ve discovered a miniature herbarium. Humans have been pressing plants for centuries, but the story of the herbarium as an official practice is a quirky mix of science, art, and obsession.
The word herbarium might sound like a spell straight out of Harry Potter, but it simply means a collection of preserved plant specimens. The tradition began in Renaissance Italy, where 16th-century botanist Luca Ghini had the clever idea to press plants, dry them, and mount them on paper for study. Before this, botanists mostly drew plants in notebooks (sometimes beautifully, sometimes… less so). Ghini realized a pressed plant on paper was not only more accurate than a sketch but could also be mailed, studied, and compared—sort of like a pre-digital plant database.
These early herbaria looked more like scrapbooks than scientific tools. Pages of parchment were filled with plants glued down and labeled in tidy handwriting. They were prized not just for their usefulness in identifying species but also for their artistry—pressed petals and curling leaves preserved with almost painterly detail. Some even became status symbols among the wealthy, like a botanical version of collecting rare stamps.
As European explorers traveled the globe, herbaria became treasure chests of discovery. Plant hunters returned with specimens of orchids from the tropics, cacti from the Americas, and even tea from Asia, carefully flattened and carried across oceans. These collections fueled scientific breakthroughs in botany, medicine, and agriculture, not to mention sparking plenty of plant fever along the way.
Today, herbaria are housed in universities and museums, often containing centuries-old specimens still in remarkable condition. They continue to serve as living libraries of biodiversity, helping scientists track climate change, species migration, and even the introduction of invasive plants.
But they’re not just for scientists. Making your own herbarium can be as simple as collecting wildflowers from a hike (ethically, of course), pressing them between heavy books, and labeling them with where and when you found them. It’s part science experiment, part art project, and part time capsule—a way of preserving not just plants but the memory of encountering them.
So the next time you slip a flower into a book, remember: you’re participating in a centuries-old tradition that began with curious Renaissance botanists and continues to delight artists, scientists, and wanderers today.
Eufloria’s Herbarium Collection
Our Botanical Sheets are our essential offering— an artistic take on the time honored tradition of mounting pressed plants for long-term scientific study. Botanical Sheets are single species of plants mounted on handmade watercolor paper with an identification label meant for display and decoration. Work with us to put multiple sheets together in a frame for a large statement piece or frame them individually for a gallery wall. Sheets can be customized to suit your needs and tastes— perfect for interior designers and do-it-yourself decorators.
We keep a stock of pressed and mounted plants in more than 50 varieties of wild and garden flowers. We choose those that produce the loveliest color and form as pressed plants. We add to our stock through the year based on seasonal availability of our favored plants.
Visit the store to see what’s in stock in the Eufloria Herbaria or make a custom order here.
Eufloria Botanic Art Lookbook
Contact us to receive an email with Eufloria Botanic Art’s Lookbook PDF that showcases our pressed plant artworks offering inspiration on how they bring natural beauty, storytelling, and elegance into living spaces.
