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imbricating bracts, covering and protecting tlie buds until their opening; 

 only a few open flowers are present at one time, the thin long tube of 

 which remains under cover of the bract while the very delicate petals and 

 Sexualorgans protrude. If these are forced into a fitting bottle or tube very 

 carefully, for instance with a thin bamboo-chip fastened alongside and 

 protruding at both ends, some flowers may be preserved uninjured, but very 

 often all flowers have been crushed between bracts and wall of the tube 

 or have been injured by the waving movement of the liquid. 



Here a few or at least one single flower should have been cut out 

 carefully with a fragment of the axis and a special bract, and preserved 

 apart. If no fitting tubes for single flowers are available, larger tubes or 

 even tinboxes containing several flowers may be used, if each flower be 

 carefully enwrapped in thin firm paper bearing the number of the specimen 

 and the remaining room exactly filled up with thin shavings. 



Dense inflorescences of "other genera wanting a rigid covering, as for 

 instance Amomum, containing several open flowers, do not claim so much 

 precautions; still it is always very desirable to have at least one complete 

 flower preserved apart. The urgency may be left to the judgment of the 

 collector. 



The gathering of flowers etc. preserved in spirit, does not discharge 

 the collector from his duty to dry also entire or sliced inflorescences for 

 the herbarium. Without complete inflorescences or such divided into halves, 

 no herbarium is satisfactory for scientific study. 



In preparing of herbarium of this order I recommend the following 

 precautions. Beyond as large parts of the foliate stem as the collector thinks 

 fit there should always be taken some single leafblades, with their petiole 

 and ligula with part of the sheath, and these must be taken as well from 

 the top as from the elder parts of the stem and also from young stems, 

 for the structure of the ligula is often very different in old and young stems 

 and the tomentum is much more conspicuous in younger than in adult parts. 

 As is pointed out already, entire or halved inflorescences should be dried, 

 and here if no spirit is used the drying apart of some single flowers (the 

 ovary and special bract not to be omitted) is of high urgency. 



The single flowers should be laid out flat as far as possible and be 

 dried under a moderate pressure enwrapped in blotting paper or newspaper 

 as quickly as anyway possible, in order to avoid the structural changements 

 in the flower indicated above. The most trying material for the preparator 

 are certainly the flowers of the Curcuma spec, which, being dried without 

 artificially heating either curl up (when not enough pressed) or when 

 pressed too much get transformed into thin membranous rags not able to 

 be prepared for examination. Splendid specimens however are to be got by 

 splicing the spikes, taking out open flowers and some buds, and also some 



