By Amy Weiss

Apr 29 2019

For some plant groups, the shape of the flower or fruit is important for their identification, so these parts are preserved in jars to maintain the three-dimensional structures of the plant.

These collections are often called spirit collections, as the fluid used to preserve the specimen is typically a mix of denatured alcohol (spirits), glycerol, and water. The staff at the New York Botanical Garden affectionately calls these collections “pickles.”

The fluid-preserved collections at the Garden represent a number of different plant groups, and are usually associated with other collections, like a herbarium sheet. Our pickle collection contains many Cactaceae (cactus family) specimens, pictured here, largely due to the collection efforts of Garden scientist Nathaniel L. Britton, and his colleague Joseph N. Rose, for their publication The Cactaceae.