Gould Colman, Cornell University archivist, suggested to me that equally valuable, particularly when he was dean, was Bailey's masterly delegation of authority and, more important, his ability to instruct the helpers in the precise manner in which the chore should be performed. The remaining members of the hortorium staff who worked under him testify to his prodigious memory and to his habit of constantly recording ideas, short notes, or longer paragraphs on whatever scrap of paper was available so that nothing was lost. Would that more of us were so gifted.

Liberty Hyde Bailey died on December 25, 1954. Mrs. Bailey had died in 1938. The Baileys had two children, Sara Bailey Sailor and Ethel Zoe Bailey. Ethel's career was as co-worker with her father whom she accompanied on numerous collecting expeditions. She played a substantial role in the production of the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture and the Manual of Cultivated Plants. She coauthored Hortus, edited the first eight volumes of Gentes Herbarum, and served as curator of the hortorium from its inception in 1935 until retirement in 1957. Subsequently, she voluntarily continued her monumental index to the world's cultivated plants almost until her death in 1983.