Economic Botany Collection and Fibers Asa Gray, Harvard Professor in Botany, Establis

OEB 59 – Plants and Human Affairs Lab 4: Economic botany collection and fibers Asa Gray, Harvard Professor in Botany, established the Economic Botany collection. Gray had connection with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in England and some of the first materials added to the collection were from Kew. The idea of the collection was to show the ways in which people used plants. Gray’s interests were in floristics – the study of plants of a particular region. Gray also was head of the Botanical Garden in Cambridge. It was on Garden and Linnaean Streets in Cambridge. In 1872 George Lincoln Goodale, an experienced botanist who studied plant physiology came to Harvard. Among many other roles he became the first director of the Botanical Museum. In that position he developed public displays for the Museum on plants and their use by people. Some of the materials you find in the collection today were on exhibit in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Goodale was responsible for the commissioning of the glass plant models. Following Goodale in the Museum was Oakes Ames. Ames was interested in many areas of botany but particularly in the study of orchids and in Economic Botany. He created a collection of orchids that today is one of the largest and most important in the world. He also assembled an Economic Botany Herbarium and Library. He made a large personal collection of items related to plants and their use by people. His research interests, aside from the orchids, were in agriculture and human culture. He wrote Economic Annuals and Human Culture in which he argued that it was humans’ dependence on angiosperm seeds that allowed the invention of agriculture. In the lobby area of the HUH is a copy of one of the charts used in his teaching. Illustrated by his artist wife, Blanche, it shows a phylogeny of the economically important plants. Have a look when you come to class. Paul C. Mangelsdorf followed Ames as director of the Botanical Museum. Mangelsdorf as you know studied maize. His studies were instrumental in developing methods for corn breeding that gave higher and more consistent yields. His theories on origins of maize are now more of historical interest. His work contributed greatly to understanding the genetics of the maize plant and the biogeography of the plant. There is a large collection of maize that Mangelsdorf established, including archeological materials. All are here at Harvard for anyone to study. Oakes Ames student, Richard Evans Schultes, was appointed when Manglesdorf retired. From the start Schultes had studied hallucinogenic plants. First it was peyote and then teonanácatl, mushrooms, and hallucinogenic plants of Mexico. His primary work focused on South America and particularly Colombia where much of his fieldwork involved long trips where he lived with native peoples to learn how they used plants. He also did research of Hevea, the Brazilian rubber plants, where his interests were in distributions and species delimitations. He collected widely and served for a period as curator of orchids at Harvard. It is said that when William Burroughs talked of wild, metaphysical experiences when taking Ayahuasca, Schultes remarked: “That’s funny, Bill, all I saw was colors.” Many of the materials in the collection related to South America are from Schultes and his students. TO DO's for the lab on fibers: I. Give the binomial for each of the examples you see along with the family to which they belong. II. Choose one of the plants as an example and find at least one modern example of how this plant is still important. III. Choose a different example and discuss its processing. How does it go from field to the market place? IV. List one fiber plant that we did not show you. The TF or curatorial assistant will see if they can find an example of it in the collections for you to examine. .

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