Jane Colden

[2]: 54 [1] Contemporary scholarship maintains that she was the first female botanist working in America, which ignores, among others, Maria Sibylla Merian or Catherine Jérémie.

Colden is most famous for her untitled manuscript, housed in the British Museum, in which she describes the flora of the Hudson Valley in the Newburgh region of New York state, including ink drawings of 340 different species.

[6] Due to the lack of schools and gardens around the area, her father wrote to Peter Collinson, where he inquired about getting sent "the best cuts or pictures of [plants] for which purpose I would buy for her Tourneforts Institutes and Morison’s Historia plantarum, or if you know any better books for this purpose as you are a better judge than I am I will be obliged to you in making the choice"[7] in order for Jane to continue her studies of botanical sciences.

Besides obtaining libraries and samples for his daughter, Cadwallader also surrounded her with like-minded scientists, including Peter Kalm and William Bartram.

[7] Garden, an active collector of his local flora, later corresponded with Jane, exchanged seeds and plants with her, and instructed her in the preservation of butterflies.

[8] Between 1753 and 1758 Colden catalogued New York's flora, compiling specimens and information on more than 400[5] species of plants from the lower Hudson River Valley, and classifying them according to the system developed by Linnaeus.

For many drawings she wrote additional botanical details as well as culinary, folklore or medicinal uses for the plant, including information from indigenous people.

[9] On January 20, 1756, Peter Collinson wrote to John Bartram that "Our friend Colden's daughter has, in a scientific manner, sent over several sheets of plants, very curiously anatomized after this [Linnaeus's] method.

Colden's original manuscript describing the flora of New York has been held in the British Museum since the mid-1800s after passing through the hands of several collectors.

[7] Some species she went on to illustrate, press and describe included: Phytolacca decandra (now P. americana), Polygala senega, Erythronium americanum, Ambrosia artemisifolia, Monarda didyma, and Clematis virginiana.

Jane Colden documented her findings of an entirely new flora for her countrymen and for eager Europeans, and it is with this in mind that we can fully understand her delight in botany and appreciate her contribution.

[7] Colden's manuscript has a title page added in 1801 by Ernst Gottfried Baldinger, who was a professor at the universities of Jena and Marburg.