[1] In 1876, she enrolled at the women's liberal arts college Wellesley, only one year after the opening of the institution.

[2] Much of her work appeared in the books of other botanists,[2] although she did publish a catalog of liverworts and mosses of North America in 1885.

[1][4] In 1886 and 1887 she studied under Dr. Arnold Dodel at the University of Zurich where she did private work and prepared charts for a Cryptogamic Botany illustration.

[5] After returning from Zurich, Cummings became an associate professor of cryptogamic botany at Wellesey.

[1] Between 1892 and 1903 she published three exsiccata works called Decades of North American lichens with Thomas Albert Williams and Arthur Bliss Seymour as co-editors.