Orchids at Christmas

Orchids at Christmas was published jointly by the Ames family and Harvard's Botanical Museum in 1975 as a tribute to Oakes and Blanche Ames. It has been out of print for several years. The Ames' descendants have undertaken to reprint it for the beauty of the orchid drawings by Blanche, a botanical artist, and for the arresting poems accompanying the drawings they sent out as holiday cards from 1937 through 1949. Also related is the story of Oakes's career as a professor of botany and Director of the Botanical Museum at Harvard, and as one of the founders of the American Orchid Society.

Two articles have been added to this version. The first is The Rediscovery of a Lost Orchid taken from Orchids in Retrospect (Cambridge, 1948), a collection of essays on the Orchidaceae by Oakes Ames. The second is an excerpt from Orchids in Bronze by Pauline Ames Plimpton published in the American Orchid Society Bulletin (Sept. 1983). Also Gustavo Romero, the current Keeper of the Oakes Ames Orchid Herbarium, brings us up to date.