For my botany class, we're supposed to find 1 sample of plant each from 10-12 different families, press them, and mount them. They are due this Thursday (3 days from now).I had already pressed all the plants needed well ahead of time using the plant press with straps and newspaper. I waited about a week to for them to dry fully, and they were all nice and flat - but someone thought they were trash and threw them away! I should have hid them in my room, but obviously it's too late for that.Now I gathered more plants to replace them, but I don't think I have enough time to press them normally. I heard that I can place foil on top of each individual plant and use a clothes iron to flatten and dry them quickly. Will this work? It doesn't need to be a work of art, it just needs to be recognizable and intact for mounting. Thanks for any advice - it's much appreciated.
OUCH! That is painful. I would not recommend the iron and foil, since that would prematurely wilt the plant, and the foil is likely to damage the plant. Instead use the iron on the lowest heat setting and go evening while the leaf is between paper to cloth. !!!!!!!!!!! WARNING !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Please make sure the plants that you are doing this do not contain toxic oils that may vaporize from the heat or taint your iron and harm you. If you think you can not iron it place it between new paper, and press them individually under some text books or heavy objects for a day or two, individually will prevent the excess moisture from more plants to keep them wet. The next day take them out and let them dry on a flat, warm and dry room, they should dry quickly that way and still remain somewhat flat. And you could stick a large note saying NOT GARBAGE
I remember once reading about somebody using a microwave to accelerate the drying time of pressed plants, however I've never tried it. You could try googling this technique. I would think that the heat might cause discoloration because plants are very sensitive to that sort of thing. In any case, I would think that using a big, heavy, book-the bigger the better-like a dictionary, would work better than a newspaper. I normally press my plants in big books like this, and then put a big stack of books on top of them, and stomp a few times on it for good measure. It presses the moisture out of them and the paper absorbs it. Some papers absorb better than others, for example laminated paper doesn't work well at all for this. The trick is to get the moisture out as quickly as possible. So you can try this, let it dry a few hours, maybe take it out and put it on a new dry page, to speed up the process a little. It's like wringing out a wet towel in a way. I don't know how thick the plants you are trying to press are, but the ones I press usually dry overnight.
