Jane Colden

Jane Colden (March 27, 1724 – March 10, 1766) is considered the first woman botanist in America. Employing Linneas's new system of botanical classification, she documented over 300 plants native to the Catskill region of New York where she spend most of her life. The dissemination of Colden's detailed descriptions among European and American botanists led to increased knowledge of the plants of the New World.

History

Her father, the politician and amateur botanist Cadwallader Colden had been the first to apply the Linnean system of plant classification to specimens growing in the wilds of New York. In ___ he wrote to ___ encouraging the publication of an English text, “” He taught his daughter the new Linnean system of plant classification, which she used to describe over 340 flowers between about 1753 and 1758. She noted any medicinal use the flowers might have, illustrated each with a line and wash drawing, and bound them in an album. While visiting Coldengham in the autumn of 1753, John Bartram “looked over some of ye Dr [ Cadwallader Colden’s]daughters botanical curious observations.” By October 1, 1755, according to her father, she had compiled a "pretty large volume" containing descriptions and illustrations of 300 plants. Twenty-seven years later, a volume of 341 of Colden's plant descriptions and illustrations was in the possession of Friedrich Adam Julius von Wangenheim (1749-1800), a Hessian soldier and botanist who studied North American trees and shrubs while commanding a cavalry squadron in New York and Pennsylvania from 1778 to 1783. ., It is now in the Natural History Museum, London.