BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 



HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



Cambridge, Massachusetts Winter 1984 Vol. 30 No. 1 



THE BOTANICAL MUSEUM OF 

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



IN ITS 125th YEAR 



1858-1983 



The year 1983 marks the 125th anniversary of the founding of 

 the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. It seems, there- 

 fore, appropriate to review the present state of the Museum 

 from the point of view of its academic, research and public 



activities. 



M 



devoted to the plant sciences, its sister institutions being the 

 Gray Herbarium, the Farlow Herbarium, the Arnold Arbore- 

 tum and the Harvard Forest. Each is devoted to different aspects 

 of botany. The Museum's fields of activity — economic botany 

 (including several types of ethnobotany), paleobotany and orchid- 

 ology — are diverse and, in scope, world-wide. They are likewise 

 strongly interdisciplinary in character, basically biological but 

 impinging upon other fields of science and the arts: anthropol- 

 ogy and archaeology, chemistry and pharmacology, history, 

 geology, horticulture, to mention only several. 



Partly as a result of the wide orientation of the work of the 

 Museum, research by members of its staff and students has 

 attracted attention in fields other than the plant sciences, some- 

 times in fields distant from botany. It is particularly noteworthy 



Botanical Museum Leaflets (ISSN 0006-8098). Published quarterly by the Botanical Museum. 

 Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Subscription: $40.00 a year, net, postpaid. 

 Orders should be directed to Secretary of Publications at the above address. Second-Class Postage 

 Paid at Boston, Massachusetts. 



Published November 15, 1984 



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