Jane Colden's "Botanic Manuscript"

The Legacy of America's First Woman Botanist

Fenella Greig Heckscher

• Publisher: The American Philosophical Society Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781606180488
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: Biological Sciences

A richly illustrated account of the life and work of Jane Colden, 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botanist, yet her contributions to the field of early American botany remain little-known and her writings are mostly unpublished. Looking at Colden's original writing, the correspondence of her father, Dr. Cadwallader Colden, and eighteenth-century botanic sources, Fenella Greig Heckscher provides a full account of her life and work.

Born into an educated family of Scottish heritage, Colden's interest in botany began at an early age, when she learned the Linnaean system of plant classification from her father and followed his example to study and classify the plants of New York's Hudson Valley. Colden's acute powers of observation enabled her to create detailed descriptions and illustrations of more than 300 plant species in the province of New York. By the time of her death, her Botanic Manuscript remained a work-in-progress and little appreciated beyond European botany circles.

Richly illustrated with her own sketches and handwriting, this volume presents a full examination of Jane Colden's Manuscript, highlights 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Prologue
• Introduction
• Part I. The Coldens in the Hudson Valley
• Part II. Botanic Curiosity in Colonial New York
• Part III. Renewed Discovery of the Plants in the Botanic Manuscript
• A Complete List of the Plants Described in Jane Colden’s Botanic Manuscript
• Chronology of the Colden Family in Eighteenth-Century New York
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Acknowledgments