Over at my other blog CivilWarQuilts we do an applique block of the month each year with stories about women who lived through the Civil War. This year's is Herbarium, based on eight mid-19th-century samplers I've found with similar patterns, some blocks based on plants' natural appearance rather than the stylized roses & tulips in formal repeats that we usually see.
Our history lessons discuss the importance of "botanizing" and herbariums in the science education of the mid-19th century American schoolgirl.
Each block recalls a teacher, a botanist or a collector who organized her specimens into a book, a Herbarium (an Herbarium---if you don't pronounce the H.)