Flower Pressing for Herbalists
Lesson I: Introduction to Flower Pressing for Herbalists
Flower pressing is a way of slowing down and deepening your connection with plants. In this first lesson, we’re reminded that pressed botanicals can serve many roles: a keepsake of summer days, a tool for botanical study, or a creative expression of our relationship with nature. Herbalists, in particular, benefit from pressing plants because it allows us to observe leaf shapes, flower structures, and other details long after the season has passed.
The lesson also explores the history of pressed botanicals, from the Japanese art of Oshibana to the Renaissance beginnings of scientific herbaria, and on through the voyages of botanical explorers, Victorian parlor traditions, and modern plant science. These stories highlight how pressing plants has always been both an artistic and scientific pursuit, bridging creativity with careful observation.
“Pressed plants and flowers represent different things to different people. To some, they may be a romantic time capsule that reminds them of picking flowers beneath the summer sun. To others, pressed plants may serve as biological specimens - meticulously pressed and labeled to aid their botanical studies and preserve today’s flora for future scientists.”
Among the most fascinating chapters in this history are the botanical explorers of the 17th and 18th centuries, who traveled the world collecting and preserving plants to bring back to Europe. Figures like William Dampier, a “pirate scientist,” who returned with specimens and words like “avocado” and “barbecue” that forever changed Western knowledge and culture. Jeanne Baret, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, disguised herself as a man to join an expedition and collected thousands of specimens, many of which were new to science. And José Celestino Mutis devoted decades to documenting the flora of South America, training local artists and scientists in the process. Their pressed specimens became the foundation of modern botanical science, allowing future generations to study, classify, and ultimately understand plants in a way that reshaped medicine, trade, and culture.
Adding a pressed specimen alongside our notes transforms plant profiles into living records, grounding our studies in the physical beauty of the herbs themselves. As we progress in this course we will dive deeper into flower pressing techniques, and will have the opportunity to make some flower press crafts of our own.