potable spirits worked quite well if nothing else was available. 
Although it is certain that such methods are useful for the 
adequate preservation of plant specimens for classical taxo- 
nomic purposes, it appeared likely to us that specimens pre- 
served in such ways might have suffered a change in their 
chemistry. For example, formaldehyde is known to react with 
many aromatic compounds, while treatment with aqueous al- 
cohols (ethanol and methanol) is the method of choice for 
extracting a wide variety of secondary compounds, used in 
chemotaxonomic studies, from plant tissues. Consequently, the 
use of such methods of preservation might make it difficult to 
properly survey the many different classes of such compounds 
which have been used for systematic purposes (5). Flavonoids, 
for example, as well as related phenolics, might be severely 
affected. These are probably the most useful class of secondary 
plant constituents for chemotaxonomic purposes because of 
their widespread distribution, diversity of structure, and rela- 
tive ease of identification using simple apparatus (6). 
Since the flavonoids have previously been shown to be use- 
ful in the taxonomy of the Monocotyledonae, including the 
Palmae (7), they would appear to be a useful group of com- 
pounds to throw light on specific problems relating to the 
taxonomy of the Jessenia-Oenocarpus complex. Since most of 
the material studied grows in the Amazon Valley, however, 
many miles from any centers of civilization, it was decided to 
determine whether the use of plant preservatives in the field 
would affect subsequent analysis of the material for flavonoid 
compounds. Preservative treatments similar to those that 
might be used in the field were, therefore, investigated under 
laboratory conditions, and the results are presented here. 
The plants of Jessenia Bataua (Mart.) Burret used in this 
study were grown from a population of seeds collected from a 
single tree in Tukunare, near Mitu, Comisaria del Vaupés, 
Colombia, in July of 1976. The seeds were germinated, planted 
in soil and grown under controlled conditions in a phytotron for 
one year, until the plants were 20 cm. high. Pinnae were re- 
moved and subjected to the following treatments in order to 
simulate the procedures that have been used previously in the 
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