it seems whenever I go away from my base and come back, all the spreaders that are not facing a cardinal direction are reset to looking east and get the lenses removed, like the data was not properly saved
this only happens since I upgraded to the latest Botania, with spreaders that have been sitting there for a long time
it happens whenever the chunk gets unloaded by distance, dimension or logout, apparently

are you using some alternate server software? like cauldron (if it's on 1.10) or sponge

no, it's a local singleplayer world with forge and a few other mods, but nothing that changes how things are saved:
-abyssalcraft
-appleskin
-baubles
-blood magic
-botania
-chamaleon (library)
-chisel
-clipboard
-crafttweaker
-ffs
-fixchiselstonegen
-forgelin (library)
-guide-api (library)
-immersive engineering
-jei
-mcmulipart (library)
-mousetweaks
-optifine
-Pam's harvestcraft
-realtime clock
-refined storage
-roots
-shadowmc (library)
-storage drawers
-substratum

I noticed mana pools also getting emptied of mana and losing the sparks, as well as the botania enchanting block losing the spark
for some reason also item frames and armor stands disappear completely sometimes

if it happens to non-botania things as well then I doubt it's a botania bug, try removing any coremods and failing that normal mods until you can't reproduce it anymore

might be related or not (since you say it happens only with latest botania, i dunno if you updated forge along it) but it's seems there is probably an issue with forge chunk cache ATM MinecraftForge/MinecraftForge#3325 you may want to take a look into it and check wether or not you have dormantchunkcache enabled and if turning it off solve your issue.

makes sense, thank you! :* :* :* <3 <3 <3