Jane Colden

Jane Colden (March 27, 1724 – March 10, 1766) was an American botanist, described as the "first botanist of her sex in her country" by Asa Gray in 1843. Although not acknowledged in contemporary botanical publications, she wrote a number of letters resulting in botanist John Ellis writing to Carl Linnaeus of her work applying the Linnaean system of plant identification to American flora, for which botanist Peter Collinson stated "she deserves to be celebrated". Contemporary scholarship maintains that she was the first female botanist working in America, which ignores, among others, Maria Sibylla Merian or Catherine Jérémie. Colden was respected as a botanist by many prominent botanists including John Bartram, Peter Collinson, Alexander Garden, and Carl Linnaeus. 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. Early life Colden was born in New York City, the fifth child of Cadwallader Colden, who was a physician who trained at the University of Edinburgh and became involved in the politics and management of New York after arriving in the city from Scotland in 1718, and Alice Christy Colden, the daughter of a clergyman and had been brought up in Scotland in an intellectual atmosphere. Mrs. Colden is often referred to as "the capable instructress of her children." She was educated at home and her father provided her with botanical training following the new classification system developed by Carl Linnaeus. The family's move to a in Orange County stimulated the botanical interests of both Cadwallader and Jane Colden. Cadwalleder Colden had been the first to apply the system of botanical classification developed by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (Linnaean Taxonomy) to an American plant collection and he translated the text of Linnaeus’ books into English. 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" in order for Jane to continue her studies of botanical sciences.