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NICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CamspripGr, Massacnusetts, JUNE 16, 1975 Vor. 24, No. 4 
THE CONTRIBUTION OF LINNAEUS 
TO ORCHIDOLOGY'! 
BY 
Wintuiam T. STearNn? 
The presentation to the Botanical Museum, Harvard 
University of a collection of works by Carl Linnaeus 
(1707-1778), which formed part of the library of Oakes 
Ames (1874-1950), provides a fitting occasion on which 
to review concisely Linnaeus’s pioneer contribution to 
orchidology. Orchids were Ames’s life-study and, while 
himself contributing much new knowledge, he was too 
wise and well-informed to ignore the historic background 
of modern work; the scholarly essays gathered together 
in his Orchids in Retrospect (1948) manifest the range of 
his orchidological learning and contain many references 
to earlier literature. 
Orchidology is the study of orchids as a special group 
within the Plant Kingdom. Its existence necessarily de- 
pends upon recognition of them as a definable group 
worthy of particular study, and that implies a high degree 
of botanical sophistication. A group embracing plants so 
'This paper embodies a lecture given at the Botanical Museum of 
Harvard University on September 18, 1969 when the heirs of Mrs. 
Blanche Ames presented Professor Oakes Ames’s collection of Lin- 
naeana to the Botanical Museum. It includes part of an earlier lec- 
ture, “I'wo thousand years of orchidology’, printed in Proc. Third 
World Orchid Conf. 1960, 26-42 (1960). 
* Department of Botany, British Museum (Natural History), Lon- 
don, England. 
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ECONOMIC BOTANY LIBRARY 
OF OAKES AMES 
HARVARD BOTANICAL MUSEUM 
