Basic Infrastructure

1. Spacious, well-ventilated room with ample natural or artificial lighting.
2. Sturdy workbenches for mounting and dissecting specimens.
3. Sinks with running water and proper drainage.
4. Drying racks for plant specimens.
5. Herbarium room or section (for storing preserved plant specimens).

Essential Equipment and Instruments

• Compound microscopes and dissecting microscopes (with slide preparation kits).
• Camera lucida and micrometry tools.
• Microtome (for preparing thin plant tissue sections).
• Slides and cover slips (for specimen mounting).
• Charts, models, and preserved specimens (for plant anatomy, taxonomy, and physiology).
• Plant growth chamber or small greenhouse/pot culture units.
• Balances (analytical and digital) for weighing plant materials.
• Hot air oven – for drying plant samples.
• Soxhlet apparatus – for solvent extraction of phytochemicals.
• Water bath and heating mantle – for controlled heating.
• Centrifuge – for separating extracts.
• TLC (Thin Layer Chromatography) chamber – for compound separation.
• Microscopes – for identifying structural plant components.
• Sample grinding unit or mortar and pestle for powdering samples.
• Glass and plastic containers for storing plant extracts.
• Desiccator – to store hygroscopic samples.
• Refrigerator – for preserving samples and extracts.

Apparatus and Tools

• Dissection kits (scalpel, forceps, needles, scissors).
• Glassware: test tubes, beakers, conical flasks, measuring cylinders.
• Thermometers, hand lenses, filter paper.
• Plant press and blotting sheets (for preparing herbarium specimens).
• Petri dishes and specimen jars.

Educational and Reference Materials

• Botanical charts: plant anatomy, life cycles, classification.
• 3D models: plant cell, tissues, flower structure, etc.
• Mounted herbarium sheets of local and exotic plants.
• Preserved specimens (in jars) of algae, fungi, bryophytes, pteridophytes, and gymnosperms.
• Botany lab manual and field notebooks.
• Reference books and field guides.