Harvard Museum of Natural History

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is one of those museums I have returned to a few times over the years. Located on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, it is not simply a collection of natural curiosities. It brings together specimens and objects from Harvard’s enormous scientific collections and provides a public window into research and teaching that have been taking place at the university for generations.

The museum itself is relatively young, opening to the public in 1998, but the collections behind it are much older. It was created from the collections of three Harvard institutions: the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Mineralogical & Geological Museum. Some of these collections date to the 19th century and were assembled for scientific study rather than originally intended as museum displays.

That history explains the remarkable variety inside. Walking through the galleries, we encounter dinosaurs and fossils, mammals, birds, insects, minerals and meteorites, along with exhibits exploring evolution, climate, biodiversity, and the natural world. The museum contains millions of specimens in its research collections, although only a small fraction can ever be displayed publicly.

Among the museum’s many collections, my favorite is the Glass Flowers. At first glance, it is difficult to believe that these delicate botanical specimens are made of glass. Flowers, leaves, stems, fruits, and even tiny details of plant anatomy have been reproduced with such precision that they appear almost real. The collection is both a scientific teaching tool and an extraordinary example of craftsmanship.

The collection consists of thousands of extraordinarily detailed glass models created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, a father and son team of glassmakers working in Germany. Between 1886 and 1936, they produced about 4,300 individual models representing more than 780 plant species for Harvard.

Harvard botanist George Lincoln Goodale faced a basic problem in teaching botany. Living plants were seasonal, dried specimens flattened and lost their natural appearance, and the wax or papier-mâché botanical models then available weren’t sufficiently realistic. He had seen the Blaschkas’ remarkably lifelike glass models of marine invertebrates and wondered whether they could do the same thing with plants.

The resulting models reproduce flowers, leaves, stems, fruits, roots, and minute anatomical structures with extraordinary accuracy. Some show plants at different stages of development; others illustrate disease or decay. Enlarged models reveal botanical structures that students would otherwise need a microscope to examine.

The project was made possible by Elizabeth Cabot Ware and her daughter Mary Lee Ware, who financed the collection. It became formally known as the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, created in memory of Dr. Charles Eliot Ware, Mary’s father.