A number of the world’s most nutritionally and economically important crops are currently under siege by fungi, bacteria, and pests. Various species of Puccinia are attacking wheat; Fusarium oxysporum has it out for bananas; coffee is succumbing to Hemileia vastatrix and potatoes to Phytophthora infestans, and there are many others. Plant diseases limit food supplies, and they also cause economic distress by depressing export production and eliminating agricultural jobs.

An exhibit at the Harvard Museum of Natural History revolves around the theme of our food supply’s vulnerability to plant disease, using an unconventional conduit: early 20th-century glass models of rotting fruit.

Known as Harvard’s “Glass Flowers,” the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants comprises over 4,300 sculptures of