Collections management and curation
A pollen grain of Leptoglossis lomana from the family Fabaceae
Arrangement of the collections
The pollen and spore slides are stored in two sequences at the Natural History Museum:
- The principal sequence consists of annotated slides with families, genera and species arranged alphabetically.
- The second sequence forms a collection of unlabelled duplicate slides arranged in numerical order.
A central register, which is based on a number series and corresponds to those on slides, records details of:
- slides
- exchanges
- micrographs - stereoscan and light micrographs
- vials of stored material
- how specimens were collected
- treatment given to each specimen
Specimen details are also held in electronic database form.
Specimen preparation
A detailed protocol of the method used to prepare polleniferous material for slides and scanning electron microscopy is available to download:
Pollen specimen preparation method PDF (29.8 KB)