Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames, comprising over 

 30,000 titles. 



The term, economic botany, has always been broadly inter- 

 preted in the Botanical Museum to signify interdisciplinary stud- 

 ies on plants useful or harmful to man: consequently included 

 are not only those plants of value to our modern agricultural 

 and industrial civilization but also the often complex relation of 

 primitive or pre-literate cultures to their ambient floras. 



The introductory course in eonomic botany — "Plants and 

 Human Affairs" — has been taught since 1876 and is now offered 

 annually to graduate and undergraduate students of Harvard 

 University and Radcliffe College. The most widely used text- 

 book in this field — Hill's Economic Botany — was written at the 

 Museum by a member of the staff and is based on the current 

 Museum's collections and library. Throughout its history, var- 

 ious workshops, symposia and seminars in topics in economic 



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Studies in economic botany in the American tropics have been 

 extremely constant and productive. Of special and novel interest 

 has been the ambitious search through the 4,500,000 specimens 

 in the Harvard University herbaria for collector's notes on the 

 native uses of foods and medicinal plants — research which has 

 resulted in an extremely successful book. 



Investigations into the economic botany of numerous com- 

 mercially important groups of plants have characterized much 

 of the Museum's recent effort: Hevea and other rubber-producing 

 plants; Brugmansia, Erythroxylon, Theobroma, Cannabis, to 

 name only several. 



One major aspect of economic botany has been the extensive 

 archaeological, morphological, taxonomic and genetic research 

 on the origin of cultivated plants, especially maize, in the studies 

 of which a unique group of scientists spent over a quarter of a 

 century investigating the origin, evolution, structure, history and 

 other aspects of this major cereal, including research on remains 

 of primitive maize from Mexico and South America. Further- 

 more, advanced courses have been offered on the origin of other 

 cultivated plants. 



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