how to make a herbarium file

Herbarium is a store house of collected plant specimens that are dried, pressed and preserved on sheets.

Steps to be followed during the preparation of Herbarium file-

1) Collection-

Those specimens which are complete in all aspects should be collected like - if herbs or small shrubs are collected, they should be in flowering condition, along with leaves and roots.
All information regarding the specimen should be noted down in the field notebook and a tag from the sheet should be attached to the specimen.
Always try to have extra specimen reserved so that if one get destroyed, you should use the other one.

2) Pressing-

The collected specimen should be placed in the field press at the first oppertunity.
If specimen is less than 15 inches, it should be kept directly by folding in the newspaper but if it is more than 15 inches, it should be folded in form of a 'V','N' R 'W'.
Ensure that specimen should not be damaged and can be easily studied after final mounting.

3) Drying)

It is a slow process as it does not involve any artificial heat.
It can be done naturally and artificially by using solar powered drier.
Natural drying can take upto two months during which plant can loose some moisture whereas artificial drying can be completed in 1-2 days. which induces some colour change in leaves, loss of bloom etc.

4) Mounting of specimens-

Finally, pressed and dried specimens are mounted on herbarium sheers.
A standard herbarium sheet is 29 by 41.5 cm.
Adhesive linen, paper of cellophane strips should be used for fixing specimens.
Paste or glue should be used for fixing specimen on the herbarium sheets.

5) Labelling-

It contains information noted in the field notebook.
The information includes- Name of institution, Scientific name, common name, family, locality, date of collection, collection number, name of the collector, habit and habitat including field notes.

@Isha:- Good answer, keep contributing!!

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A herbarium is a collection of pressed, dried plants.

Normally you'd have one plant (or in your case leaf) per page, fixed with tape or strips of paper, with notes of where and when it was gathered and who by, and if you know what it is, its common and latin names. Not ordinary clear sticky tape, which will dry and come unstuck in a year or two -- use sticky paper or similar.

You can press the plants in a special plant press, but all you really need is some absorbant paper (such as newspaper or sugar paper) and a weight, such as a stack of books. One plant, one or two sheets of paper, another plant and so on. Leave it like that for a few days, then it's ready to mount in the herbarium. Small dryish leaves such as grasses can often be mounted straight away in the herbarium without pressing and drying first, but fleshy or large ones will go mouldy or crease if you do that.

Herbaria (the Latin plural... you could say herbariums) are used for keeping collected plants so that their identity can be checked in the future. Any newly named plant species will have a type specimen kept like this in a botanical museum somewhere -- the "original" specimen of that species.

Also, herbaria can be used to help identification of new plants you find. I have one I use like this -- if I'm not sure of an identification, I can look at a previous specimen in my herbarium and see if it's the same or not.

I'm sure it goes without saying that you only should pick plants if you're certain you're not harming the population. No problem if it's leaves from a tree, but if it's a flower for example, check that there are lots more around, and if not, just pick one flower and one leaf -- or do a drawing instead.

Good luck!