Jane Colden’s “Botanic Manuscript”: The Legacy of America’s First Woman Botanist

Jane Colden (1724-1760) was America’s first woman botanist, yet her contributions to the field of early American botany remain little-known, and her writings are mostly unpublished. This full account of her life and work comes from her writing, her father’s correspondence, and botanical sources of the 18th century.

Born into an educated family of Scottish heritage, Jane’s interest in botany began at an early age, following the example of her father, Dr Cadwallader Colden, to study and classify the plants of New York’s Hudson Valley. Having learned the Linnaean system of plant classification, Dr Colden passed this knowledge onto his daughter, whose acute powers of observation enabled her to create detailed descriptions and illustrations of over 300 plant species in the province of New York. By the time of her death, her Botanic Manuscript remained a work-in-progress, little-appreciated beyond European botany circles.

Richly illustrated with her own sketches and handwriting, Jane Colden’s “Botanic Manuscript” presents a full examination of Colden’s Manuscript, its important contributions to the early study of America’s flora, and, three hundred years after her birth, restores Colden’s legacy as one of the country’s great botanists.