FARLOW HERBARIUM OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 
INDEX TO THE MOSS HERBARIUM 
OF WILLIAM STARLING SULLIVANT (1803-1873) 
History of the Herbarium 
The Sullivant collection was transferred to Harvard from Columbus, 
Ohio, in 1874. Joseph Sullivant ? s letter of transmittal stated that it was 
"with the understanding this herbarium is not to be broken up and distri¬ 
buted among other herbaria but is to be kept together as Sullivant 
Collection 1 * (31 July 1874) , With the herbarium was his library, manuscripts, 
and correspondence, though some of the latter was either withheld or lost. 
The herbarium proper was in 47, leather covered boxes, but, as it turned out, 
this was only the "working" herbarium. Sullivant left in "bundles" any speci¬ 
mens he did not need for comparison, as well as collections from large expedi¬ 
tions and exsiccata sets, and he disposed of many American specimens by gift 
or in his own exsiccatae, keeping only a few representatives of each species. 
Leo Lesquereux had made use of the herbarium before it was shipped for his 
leones Muscorum Supplement , and at the Gray Herbarium T. P. James used it 
freely for the Manual of Mosses of North America and sorted the Spruce Ameri¬ 
can bundles, but otherwise the herbarium was left relatively undisturbed during 
this time. 
In October, 1899 all the cryptogams of the Gray Herbarium were transferred 
to the Botanical Museum, to the quarters of W. G. Farlow, who had amassed a 
large personal herbarium and who had become Professor of Cryptogamic Botany in 
1879. Farlow employed Lucius M. Underwood to rearrange and re-label the hepa- 
tics and J. F. Collins the mosses according to then-current standards. Many of 
the bundles were incorporated. Nothing was discarded, even empty packets and 
ambiguous notes were saved. 
The last move of the herbarium was in 1919, when the Farlow Library and 
Herbarium was established in the present building. Since that time, somewhat 
random alterations of both arrangement and nomenclature have occurred. In 
1948-1949, an unknown quantity of material from the unincorporated bundles, 
which seemed to the director beyond the capacity of the Farlow to make use of, 
was given to other institutions and individuals. In 1980-1982, the herbarium 
was completely remounted and an attempt was made to standardize the nomencla¬ 
ture into a state consistent among its parts and with Sullivant T s publications. 
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