• Share this
    Bookmark and Share

Ware Collection of Glass Flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History » GLOG activity on July 19, 2010

garden visit garden picture
4 of 13

    The Glass Flowers exhibit at Harvard Museum of Natural History, where 847 species of flowering plants are always in bloom.  3,200 Blaschka glass models of flowering plants are on permanent display in Cambridge, MA. (Photo (c) President & Fellows Harvard College, photo by Nate Dean, http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/on_exhibit/the_glass_flowers.html)

    You are in tag editing mode. Click and drag over an area of the image to create a tag, or double-click on an existing tag to delete it. Click the "Tag" icon again when you're done.
Claire replied almost 3 years ago
Were these created as a scientific reference, or just to be beautiful (or both)??
HarvardGlassFlowers replied almost 3 years ago
They were created as scientific teaching tools, to teach students in the plant sciences, before the days of color photography, or airplanes.  The exquisitely realistic models allowed students to study even tropical plants in three dimensions year-round. Today Harvard University maintains greenhouses for this purpose, but the value of the models for teaching botany continues, because real plants flower only for a short period of time in their season, whereas the stunningly accurate glass flowers are in flower year round.

Add your comment here