The National Museum of Natural History has a unique feature that visitors may notice: every floor is next to rows of paned windows providing an amazing green view.
Gaze through the windows on the 4th and 5th floors to observe an endless sequence of compactor shelves safeguarding and conserving the nation's most extensive assortment of plants from the Philippines and other regions.
Library of plants
The National Herbarium was founded in 1902 and now has about 260,000 distinct dried plant specimens, including moss, algae, mushrooms, and flowers and leaves.
With hundreds of thousands of preserved plants, the collection was regarded as one of the largest in Southeast Asia during its height in the 1930s. However, many of these plants were destroyed as bombs dropped over Manila during World War II.
Since then, many of its collections have since been restored and reassembled from locations where other herbaria borrowed samples. Even from the Spanish colonization era, the National Herbarium still maintains samples of its oldest collection including specimens from as far back as 1878. These are still properly maintained alongside their most recent findings in the field
Preserving flora and fauna
The technicians collect the samples and put them in specialized freezers set at -40 degrees Celsius for three days to kill off any and all pests that would eat them up. This is done for the purpose of preventive maintenance and conservation of herbarium specimens.
Before a specimen reaches the actual rooms where museum visitors can observe the Tree of Life, it is assigned an accession number, which serves as a unique ID inside the Herbarium's database.
Every plant is digitally recorded using a high-resolution camera box that the National Herbarium Team made on the fly before it travels securely to its designated shelf. Digitizing data on every specimen in the collection is the ultimate objective for future-proofing.
The Botany and National Herbarium Division is located on the 4th floor of the National Museum of Natural History, Agrafina Circle, Rizal Park, Manila. It is open from Tuesdays to Sundays, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
