Question

The largest herbarium of the world is located at
(a) Geneva
(b) New York
(c) Berlin
(d) Kew

Answer 1

Hint: Herbarium is a collection of plant specimens that are reserved for further studies. The largest herbarium is known as the Royal botanical Garden situated in a district of London.

Complete answer:
The largest herbarium of the world, Royal Botanical Garden is located at Kew in England. The Herbarium houses approximately 7 million specimens, collected from all around the world. Specimens are either preserved in spirit or pressed and dried. The herbarium is committed to making this important collection more accessible to botanists and other scientists, for use in their own projects in varied fields of biology like in biodiversity, conservation, sustainable development and systematics.
A herbarium is defined as the collection of plants that have been dried, pressed and preserved on sheets and arranged according to the accepted nomenclature for future study by scientists is defined as herbarium. It is a source of both primary (in the form of actual specimens) and secondary (in the form of published records) information. It provides a constant and a permanent record of the botanical diversity.
An herbarium preparation broadly involves these steps:
-Field visits,
-Collection of specimens
-Drying
-Mounting on an herbarium sheet,
-Preservation,
-Labelling
-Proper storage.
The role of herbarium is increasing gradually due to habitat loss and climate change which results in the change of species and their ecology.

So, the correct answer is ‘Kew.’

Note:
Royal Botanical Garden, Kew are making efforts to generate an electronic Herbarium Catalogue containing images of the specimens and information taken from their collection labels, so that they can be accessed digitally.
Herbarium is the collection of dried and preserved plants while Botanical gardens collect, preserve and display the living plants.