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ARBORETA AND BOTANICAL GARDENS 



IN THE FIELD OF PLANT SCIENCES 



AND HUMAN W^ELFARE 



R. J. Seibert 



The botanic gardens and arboreta are a natural meeting ground for science, 

 history, art, and culture in general; yet their basic importance to the broad 

 field of plant sciences seems to have been overshadowed by a host of circum- 

 stances in recent years. Plant-science research in certain specific fields has 

 been of a nature which demands that the scientist know more and more about 

 fewer and fewer plants. More than ever before our plant scientist is delving 

 into research on new plants. Through rumor, search of old literature, mass 

 chemical analysis of plants, and ideas inspired by world-wide travel, the 

 botanic garden is increasingly more called upon to supply basic information 

 about plants for the general public, the hobbyist, the professional, the in- 

 dustrialist, the technical laboratory, the plant scientist, the home gardener, 

 and the newspaper. Upon this point I would wish to say that the service of 

 a botanical garden called on to give professional opinion, advice, information, 

 and service as well as to answer the old questions, "what is the name of that 

 plant," "where does it come from," and ''how do you grow it," is usually 

 given free of charge. At most, this service frequently goes along with the 

 benefits of taking out a five- or ten-dollar annual membership, a contribution 

 which scarcely pays for the member's servicing alone, much less for the time 

 of some academically trained person to give a professional answer which 

 may be the result of several hours' or days' research through the literature. 

 May I merely pose the thought that if these services of the botanic garden 

 and its recognized professional staff were paid for on the same basis that com- 

 parable professional advice, opinion, information, and service is given by 

 the medical doctor, the lawyer, the engineering consulting company, the 

 professional art appraiser, or the landscape architect, then perhaps the botanic 

 garden, the botanist, and the plant taxonomist would be looked upon as a 



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