Despite the best efforts of science, authentic preservation of living matter is an impossible act. Botanical life can only endure as a specimen in a liminal state; the extended occupation of a pause between natural growth and decomposition. I emphasize the effect of preservation through the use of salt—a paradoxical mineral necessary to sustain life yet, if the balance is outweighed, can also extinguish it. Using the platinum-palladium photographic process for its chemical stability, these prints complicate the ideal of preservation, albeit, at the expense of the most authentic act of living matter, decay.