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As a plant lover, I always wondered why Harvard only had glass flowers but no live flowers. While contemplating my psets and long schedule, I subconsciously summoned my inner Robert Frost and took the road less traveled to my lecture in the Northwest Building. And it made all the difference because I stumbled on a sign:

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OEB Greenhouses? What could these places be? Harvard is pretty well known for sometimes being compared to Hogwarts from Harry Potter… could this be the place where we add another piece to the puzzle and find the Mandrake plants? After seeing this sign for weeks every time I walked to my class in the Northwest building, I had to quench my curiosity somehow.

Fortunately, I was able to ask my Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professor, Charles C. Davis, who told me the greenhouses are located on the roof of the Biological Laboratories. Davis also connected me to the Plant Growth Facilities Manager, Peter Wiggin, who has been in charge of maintaining the greenhouse for our students and researchers (and master wanderers, like me).

Field Trip, Anyone?
When I reached out to Wiggin to see if he actually had any mandrakes, he offered me a tour of the facilities — see, cold emailing really does work! Excited to finally figure out what these mysterious greenhouses had, I joined him on a lovely fall afternoon to travel to the roof of the BioLabs. Although the greenhouse sadly didn’t have any crying mandrakes, I got to see many, many more fabulous plants!! In fact, there were plants from all around the world, ranging from ferns and orchids to ginormous pitcher plant vines, passion fruits, pineapple, olives, and astounding flowers.

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These greenhouses are “primarily a teaching facility” used by three OEB faculty: Charles C. Davis, Elena Kramer, and Noel M. Holbrook. These three faculty members teach introductory plant biology courses that rely on the collection as a vital teaching resource, with the goal being to have “as robust representation as we can from as many different plant lineages as possible to help supplement those kinds of classes,” Wiggin said.

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Day in the Life

Wiggin’s day normally starts around 7 to 8 a.m., but his day-to-day tasks vary widely from basic things like weeding and repotting to meeting students and faculty to discuss research projects. #hisGCalisstacked. But just like any social media influencer can tell you, a day in the life is often filled with much more reality than glamorous expectations. The first cold hard truth being, well, the cold.

As brutal as the weather is for the students — especially those embarking on the grand journey from the Quad to the Yard — the weather is equally, or perhaps more, unforgiving to our best buds (ha, get it). Without the proper climate control in the greenhouses, “much of the collection died in the summer because it was too much of a challenge to keep the place cool enough that everything could survive,” Wiggin said. “I kind of made it my mission to make nothing die.”

Where’s Marvel Studios at with a hero edit for our favorite green thumb? While we wait, maybe this is enough to convince your Aunt Tina that climate change isn’t a hoax.

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Concepts of a Plan

Wiggin has successfully implemented aluminum shade cloth in the greenhouse to reflect most of the sunlight, which is “critically important to making everything survive” when temperatures skyrocket to 110 degrees in the summer. But prepping for the winter is a trickier battle.

A humidifier doesn’t accompany the greenhouse’s heating system — so the air can become dramatically drier in the winter, when the heat is on. That can pose a challenge for plants that need humidity to thrive. So while keeping the greenhouse cool in the summer and warm in the winter seems like an obvious solution, that’s not the only line Wiggin has to walk. Making matters even more complex, a plant from the dry Cape Floristic Region of South Africa might sit three meters away from its buddy from the tropical rainforests of Borneo and Sumatra. That’s like asking a CS concentrator and a Folklore and Mythology kid to cohabitate. #notopportune

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Defying Gravity Expectations

From my conversation with Wiggin, it’s clear that there’s still a lot to be done to protect the teaching collection and ensure it remains as much of a gem to the university as Math 55! “Just trying to stay on top of managing the conditions in the greenhouse is a lot of work,” Wiggin said.

But with a proper modified atmosphere system and automated climate control, Wiggin is confident that “we could focus on growing the collection more and the health of the plants, and make it really a collection that Harvard could be proud of.” With a diverse collection with rare representatives from around the world, “then it starts to transcend just the classes, and you might have things that folks outside of plant biology or OEB might want to see.”

So the next time you find yourself in need of a crashout walk (say, during finals), consider paying the greenhouse a visit. The man, the myth, the legend will be eagerly awaiting your arrival! “I would never turn somebody away,” Wiggin said.