Paleobotany 



Another long established part of the Museum is the Labora- 

 tory of Paleobotany. The collection of fossil plants, constituting 

 one of the most valuable of the world because of its wealth of 

 type specimens, has been the basis of research in plant evolution 

 for nearly a century. Linking botany and geology, Harvard's 

 paleobotanical research has in recent years studied the oldest 

 forms of life yet discovered, some specimens dated at more than 

 three billion years of age. 



The staff and students of the Laboratory of Paleobotany have 

 been active in field work in sundry parts of the world: North 

 America, Greenland, South Africa, Australia. 



The Bailey-Wetmore Laboratory of 

 Plant Anatomy and Morphology 



Although the Wood Collection, basis of the Bailey-Wetmore 

 Laboratory of Plant Morphology and Anatomy, is not exclu- 

 sively a part of the Botanical Museum, it is housed in the 

 museum. This facility represents the union of wood samples 

 from the Biological Laboratories, the Gray Herbarium, the 

 Arnold Arboretum, the Harvard Forest and the Botanical 

 Museum— the second largest scientific wood collection in the 

 United States. It is under the direction of a committee of repre- 

 sentatives of the several institutions. 



Orchidology 



The Orchid Herbarium and Library of Oakes Ames, compris- 

 ing a collection of more than 100, 00C herbarium specimens and 

 many thousands of spirit collections of orchids from every con- 

 tinent and an associated library of some 5,000 titles, represents 

 the world's largest herbarium devoted to a single plant family. 

 Originally dedicated mainly to purely taxonomic and floristic 

 research, its importance to wider fields of research has recently 

 been established in such disciplines as cytology, genetics, phyto- 

 chemistry, phytogeography and horticulture. Members of the 

 staff of the Orchid Herbarium have, during the past half century 



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