or more, carried out exploration in many parts of both hemi- 

 spheres, especially in the tropics. 



Although the staff of the Orchid Herbarium is concerned 

 primarily with taxonomic and floristic investigation, it offers 

 valuable consultative services to orchidological horticulture. 



The Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames 



This unique library of some 30,000 titles is topically indexed 

 to uses of plants as well as to names of plants. Basic to the 

 teaching of various aspects of economic botany, it is organized 

 especially for student use. It is, however, a research tool of 

 extreme importance, consulted by students and scholars from 

 mmany fields at Harvard and by researchers from other univer- 

 sities in the greater Boston area. It is completely interdiscipli- 

 nary in scope, organization and aims. 



The Tina and Gordon Wasson 

 Ethnomycological Collection 



Given to the Botanical Museum by Dr. R. Gordon Wasson 

 and dedicated in February, 1983, this collection represents the 

 only facility in the world set up specifically for research in the 

 history and influence of fungi in human affairs. It is basically an 

 interdisciplinary library of approximately 8000 titles, including 

 sundry items in foreign languages that are not often found in this 

 country and numerous valuable rare herbals and other volumes 

 published in medieval Europe. 



Associated with the library is a collection of art and archae- 

 ological artifacts: carvings of mushrooms in jade, ivory, bone 

 and wood from Asia; stone "mushroom gods" from Guatemala, 

 some dated approximately 600 B.C.; a 2000-year-old Mexican 

 shaman communing, with her hand on a large mushroom; Japa- 

 nese and Chinese paintings; posters; drawings; American Indian 

 documents; and other objects. 



This collection is available to research scholars whose inter- 

 ests lie in studies of the role that fungi have played in civilization. 



8 



