What a pressing session looks like

Most of the hobby happens at a table. You cut a handful of flowers, trim them, and lay them between sheets of absorbent paper inside a press. That takes about fifteen minutes. Two or three days later you spend five more swapping damp paper for dry and tightening the press. Then nothing for a few weeks. The other half is what you do with the results: arranging them on paper, naming and labeling them, or filing them away for a project in winter, when nothing is in bloom.

Dozens of pressed flowers, leaves and grasses laid out flat in a dense rectangle on a pale blue background — Flowers, leaves and grasses, all pressed flat

Your first pressing, step by step

What you can make in your first month

Pressed flower card

Three or four small blooms glued to a blank card. It uses your very first pressing and takes ten minutes.

Framed fern

A single frond between two panes of glass. Ferns press flat in about two weeks and keep their green.

Five-tree leaf page

One leaf from each of five street trees, pressed, named and dated in an album.

Skeleton leaf

A maple leaf simmered and brushed down to its veins in one afternoon, then dried flat overnight.

Pressed pink flower stems lying on a printed book page, with the wing nut and corner of a press board beside them

Choosing and loading a press

Two boards, four bolts, a stack of paper

Size

A press around 6 by 8 inches holds a dozen small blooms per layer. Go to 11 by 11 inches or larger if you want fern fronds, long stems or whole plants.

Bolts or straps

Corner bolts with wing nuts give the firmest pressure but take a minute to undo. Strap presses open faster and suit large, flat specimens.

Boards

Look for plywood at least 3/8 inch thick. Thin fiberboard bows in the middle, and then only the edges get pressed.

What should be inside

Corrugated cardboard dividers, which let air through, and several sheets of blotting paper. Ten layers is plenty to start.

Loading order, every time

Board, cardboard, blotting paper, flowers, blotting paper, cardboard, and so on up to the top board.

Tightening

Turn each nut a little, then the next, working around the corners. Cranking one corner down first tilts the board and slides the flowers.

Watch a press being loaded, free

Oregon State University Extension: Using a Plant Press Free video showing how the layers stack and when to retighten

Which plants press well

Easiest

Naturally flat flowers with a single row of petals. Pansies, violas, cosmos, daisies, larkspur and single hydrangea florets all dry in two to three weeks.

Leaves and ferns

The most forgiving material there is. Fall leaves keep their color best if you pick them the day they turn, before they dry on the tree.

Hard

Roses, peonies, tulips and lilies hold too much water to press whole. Pull the petals off and press them one by one.

Avoid

Succulents and anything fleshy. They rot before they dry.

What happens to color

Yellows, oranges and blues hold. Reds darken toward maroon, pinks fade, and whites turn cream.

A single leaf skeleton with every vein intact, pale gold against a black background

Four directions to take it

Open one to see where to start

Pressed flower artArranging pressed material into pictures, cards and framed pieces. In Japan the same craft is called oshibana.

Start here

Lay three pressed pansies or one fern on a blank card with no glue. Nudge them with tweezers until the spacing looks right, then lift each one and fix it with a dot of glue the size of a pinhead.

Herbarium makingPressing whole plants and mounting each on a labeled sheet, the way botanists have recorded plants since the 1500s.

Start here

Press one whole plant from your own yard with its stem, leaves and flower attached. Write its label the same day: the name, the exact place, the date and who collected it.

Oregon State University Extension: Using a Plant Press

Leaf collectingOne leaf per tree species, named and dated. It is a good way to learn the trees in your neighborhood.

Start here

Take one leaf from each of five different trees on your street this week. Press them, name each one, and give every leaf its own album page with the date and the street.

Arbor Day Foundation: Tree Identification

Leaf skeletonsLeaves stripped down to their network of veins. The stripping happens at the stove, and the finished skeletons dry flat in the press.

Start here

Simmer three or four thick leaves (maple or magnolia) for 30 minutes in 2 cups of water with 4 teaspoons of washing soda. Cool them in clean water, then brush the soft green tissue off one leaf at a time.

Home Science Tools: How to Make a Leaf Skeleton

Each direction has its own short gear list. The button inside a card adds that group to the press list, and you can still drop single lines there.

Where you can and cannot pick

Always fine

Your own yard, and any flowers you bought.

Private land

Ask the owner first, every time. That includes a neighbor's hedge, a farm field and a vacant lot.

National parks

Picking or removing any plant or part of one is prohibited under federal regulation (36 CFR 2.1). Not one flower, not one leaf.

National forests and other federal land

The Forest Service asks visitors to leave wildflowers where they grow. Collecting needs a permit in many districts and is banned outright in wilderness and research areas. Call the local ranger district office before you take anything.

State, county and city parks, preserves and botanical gardens

Assume picking is banned unless a posted rule or a staff member says otherwise.

Protected species

Plants on the federal or your state's endangered and threatened lists must not be picked anywhere. Many states also protect native orchids, trilliums and lilies by name. If you cannot name a wild plant, leave it.

Where picking is allowed

Take from large patches only, no more than one flower in twenty, and leave the roots in the ground.

Plants that hurt

Learn poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac before collecting leaves, since all three turn a tempting red in fall. Sap from wild parsnip and giant hogweed blisters skin in sunlight.

The federal land rules, from the source

US Forest Service: Wildflower Ethics and Native Plants Why and where picking is restricted on national forests and grasslands

What trips beginners up

Mold

It comes from flowers picked damp or paper left wet. Pick dry and change the paper once.

Browning

Slow drying turns petals brown. Thick flowers and a cool, humid room are the usual causes.

Peeking

A half-dry flower wrinkles and tears when the press opens. After the paper change, leave it shut.

The wrong paper

Embossed paper towels print their pattern into petals, and waxed paper traps moisture. Use smooth, absorbent sheets.

Too much glue

It soaks through thin petals and leaves a shiny dark patch. Use dots, not lines.

Fading

Every pressed flower fades in light. A piece in a sunny window can lose its color in a year. On a shaded wall it lasts for many.

Pressed pansies and a daisy between glass in a brass frame, standing on a sunlit windowsill — Pansies between glass, in full sun

Where to learn more

The World Wide Pressed Flower Guild is the main organization for the craft and keeps a beginners section and free downloadable classes on its site. University extension services publish the most reliable pressing instructions, because they teach it for plant identification. An identification app such as iNaturalist is worth installing before your first walk. Knowing what a plant is tells you whether it is common, protected or likely to give you a rash.

Free places to learn and identify

How the kit is put together

The press and a pair of tweezers are the whole essential kit, and a book stands in for the press until you decide you like this. The recommended lines are the small things that make results better: spare blotting paper for the mid-press change, envelopes to store what you make, and a glue that will not stain. Everything after that depends on which direction you take, so add only the group that matches yours.

Four pressed fall leaves in a row on a white background: a yellow oak leaf, two red maple leaves and an orange-brown plane leaf — Four pressed leaves, four trees

Load the press

Compare the options on each line, then set your tiers and check out from the press list. Clicking a card selects it there, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out. The press, tweezers and the three recommended lines start in the kit. The gear for each direction stays out until you add that direction.

Wooden flower press

Essential · Core equipment

Holds even pressure on many layers at once and lets air reach them, which a stack of books cannot do. It is the one tool the hobby is built around.

budget

zunmial Flower Press 11"x11" Large 10-Layer Wooden Kit for Drying

4.3(82)

$18.99

Flower Pressing

What a pressing session looks like

Your first pressing, step by step

Choosing and loading a press

Which plants press well

Four directions to take it

Where you can and cannot pick

What trips beginners up

Where to learn more

How the kit is put together

Load the press

Wooden flower press

Fine-point tweezers

Blotting paper sheets

Glassine envelopes

Acid-free PVA glue

Floating glass frame

Blank cards and envelopes

Herbarium mounting paper

Archival hinging tape

Archival ink pen

Tree identification guide

Leaf collection album

Washing soda

Reusable cleaning gloves