Blooming Marvelous! Harvard’s Blaschka Glass Flowers

Artisans reflect nature’s brilliance by making hundreds of glass plants that never fade.

Father and son Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka spent decades glass-blowing 847 life-size plant models for Harvard professor George Lincoln Goodale, founder of the Botanical Museum. The Ware Collection of Blaschka glass plant models includes over 780 species and can be seen at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Mass. Rhododendrites/CC BY-SA 4.0

Naturally, it’s impossible to see four seasons in one day. Yet we can see hundreds of plants from around the world simultaneously—sprout, bud, bloom, set seeds, and wither away at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Throughout the museum’s collection of herbaria, plant specimens, and wax and paper-mâché models, we can see the life cycle of plants. However, many of those types of specimens and models tend to fade or decay over time. Yet a pioneering set of fragile plant models endures at the museum: “The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants.”