Why pressed flowers belong in a nature journal

A sketch captures the shape of a thing; a pressed flower captures its actual colour, its texture, the faint translucency of a petal against paper. For anyone keeping a nature journal, the two work beautifully together. You can draw the whole plant in situ – the lean of it towards the light, the way it grows out of a hedge bank – and then press a single bloom or leaf to sit alongside the drawing as a record of the real thing.

Pressing is also forgiving. Unlike watercolour, it doesn't demand skill or expensive materials, and it suits the British climate rather well: a rainy afternoon is the perfect time to be sorting dried specimens and writing up notes rather than standing in a field. Done properly, a pressed ox-eye daisy or herb robert will hold its colour for years.

Collecting kindly: what to pick and what to leave

In the UK you may pick flowers, leaves and fruit from common wild plants on land you have a right to be on, but it is an offence to uproot any wild plant without the landowner's permission. Beyond the law, there is a simple ethic worth holding to: take very little, take only the abundant, and leave no visible trace.

• Avoid protected ground. Nature reserves, Sites of Special Scientific Interest, National Trust land and churchyard wildflower meadows usually prohibit picking. Check local byelaws and always follow the Countryside Code.
• Never pick rare species. If you aren't certain what it is, leave it and photograph it instead. Rare and scarce plants are often exactly the ones a beginner might mistake for something common.
• One or two specimens only. A single stem of red campion tells you as much as ten. Never strip a clump, and never take the last flower standing.
• Pick dry. Wait until mid-morning, after the dew has lifted. Damp specimens go mouldy in the press within days.
• Note the spot. Record the grid reference, habitat and date before you move on. A pressed flower without a location is just a curiosity.

Your pressing kit

You need far less than the catalogues suggest. A homemade press works as well as a bought one, and many journalers simply use a stack of heavy books.

• Two pieces of rigid board – 3mm plywood or thick mount board cut to A5 or A4
• Blotting paper or unscented kitchen roll, cut to the same size
• A few sheets of newspaper as outer padding
• Corrugated card, if you have it, to let air circulate
• Something heavy: a 5–10kg stack of books, or a proper press with wing nuts
• A small pair of scissors and fine tweezers for arranging stems

The pressing method, step by step

Work on a table with the specimen in front of you and decide what the page needs. For a journal, a single flowerhead, one leaf and a short length of stem is usually ideal. Trim the stem to about 8cm, and if the flower is thick or fleshy – a daisy, a dandelion, a foxglove – slice it carefully in half lengthways with a sharp blade so it dries flat rather than rotting in the middle.

Lay the specimen face down or in profile, whichever shows its character, on a sheet of blotting paper. Use the tweezers to spread petals and leaves into a natural arrangement; once dried, they will hold exactly the shape you leave them in. Place a second sheet of blotting paper on top, then newspaper above and below, then the boards.

Stack and weight it. If you are using books, pile them evenly so the pressure is spread across the whole specimen. Leave it for 24 hours, then change the blotting paper for dry sheets – this first change is the one that prevents mould. Change it again every two or three days for the first week.

Most thin-stemmed British wildflowers are ready in two to three weeks. Test by lifting a corner; if the stem is still floppy or cool to the touch, give it another week. Thick-stemmed plants such as hogweed or teasel can take a month or more.

British wildflowers that press beautifully

Some species dry flat and keep their colour; others turn brown and disappoint. These are the reliable ones, and all are common enough to be picked sparingly in the right place.

• Ox-eye daisy – split the head, and the white rays stay crisp
• Red clover and white clover – press the individual florets rather than the whole head
• Herb robert – small, pink, five-petalled, and endlessly useful for filling gaps
• Selfheal and bugle – deep blue-purple colour that holds well
• Yarrow – feathery leaves press into lovely delicate shapes
• Primrose and lesser celandine – pick early in the season, before the yellow fades
• Germander speedwell – tiny, bright, and ideal for the margins of a page

Mounting and annotating your specimens

Use acid-free paper or a journal with good-quality pages, because ordinary paper will yellow and stain the specimen over time. Attach flowers with tiny dots of PVA applied with a pin, or with narrow strips of gummed linen tape or washi tape across the stem. Avoid clear sticky tape, which goes brittle and brown.

Leave a margin around each specimen for notes. This is where the journal earns its keep: the date, the place, the weather, the soil, the company the plant was keeping. Add the common and botanical names, and a small sketch of the whole plant as it grew. A pressed flower with a careful page around it becomes something far richer than a dried bloom – it becomes a record of a particular morning in a particular place.