Phil, Drying and pressing isn't a very desirable method of preserving flowers. You lose all the small structures, you distort all the major ones, and you get major shrinkage. A much more user-friendly method is to preserve flowers in spirit. Put the flower in the bottle and add preservative spirit until it is well covered. Labelling: you can write directly onto the outside of the bottle with a "Zebra" pen (or similar). When you want to examine the flower, take it out of the bottle and look at it. When finished, you put it back till next time. You get some shrinkage (but much less than the drying method) and you lose the colours (drying also destroys colours), but all the fine structures are retained.
Bottles: Get some wide-mouth bottles with air-tight lids. Glass bottles are best, unless you want the collection to be mobile, in which case plastic is lighter and less fragile. I don't know what's available in your part of the world, but I've found the following to be useful: (i) Re-sealable baby-food bottles, (ii) Low-volume soft-drink bottles (iii) Medical-specimen jars (the ones used for collecting samples of urine and other stuff). Plastic containers: the transparent containers that films are supplied in are ideal for most small flowers, and are available in large numbers at no cost from your friendly local film-processing lab. Spirit: There are several recipes for preservative spirit. I now use 60% ethanol, 38% water and 2% glycerine. Until recently I used 50% ethanol, 48% water and 2% glycerine, but I've found that the ethanol evaporates too quickly from this mixture in my tropical temperatures..... extra ethanol means my new formula has a longer shelf-life. Some recipes use FAA or formaldehyde as a component, but I avoid them due to their toxicity and/or irritant effect on skin. You need to check and top-up the bottles every 2-3 years because the spirit slowly evaporates, even from the best-sealed bottles. Plastic bottles last 5-15 years before they go brittle (they'd last longer in a cooler climate), while glass bottles last indefinitely. Cheers, Peter O'Byrne Singapore ===================================== Q: Why do kids from New South Wales do so badly in exams ? A: They only ever get half the aNSWer. Q: Why do kids from Queensland do even worse ? A: They only ever get one-third of the ANswer in the right order. Q: Why do kids from Tasmania score worse than kids from NSW & QLD ? A: Tassys actually get two-thirds of the ANSWer, but only 2 letters are in the right order, and the W is upside-down. _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids
