Bloodroot

Jane’s detailed botanical descriptions reveal her curiosity and intelligence and her careful observation demonstrates the working of a scientific mind. For a woman of that time to be encouraged to follow an intellectual pursuit and to succeed in the field provides enough explanation for why Jane became the first woman botanist of colonial America. But as I read her entries I find some of them to be not only carefully observed but also erotic.

Stalk is moderately thick, round smooth naked, & grows about a

foot high, it carries a single flower, its top turn downwards so that

the flower hangs with its top downwards but when it is in Seed,

the Stalk stands erect again.

Flowers are of a pale yellow colour, grow from 3 to 10 together, at

The top of the Stalk, each having a separate foot Stalk, of about half

An Inch long, and bend downwards; when the Berries ripens their

foot Stalk become of a bright red colour, & also the under end of

those Leaves directly under them.

Botany is mostly about reproduction so maybe I’m just reading something extra into her writings but I wonder if botanical study provided Jane an avenue into another area off limits to women of her era. In pursuit of this idea I am producing a series of folios that include some of her descriptions. The folio shown here is titled Bloodroot and is made from pigment prints on handmade paper with pressed plants, silk organza and linen thread. It measures 32” x 54” when open.

No. 93

The Jane Colden manuscript containing her over 300 descriptions and drawings of Hudson Valley plants is held in the collection of the British Natural History Museum. In 1963 the Garden Clubs of Dutchess and Orange counties in New York published a reproduction of Jane’s manuscript with a selection of her original entries. It’s wonderful that we have this for reference and it enables us to read her detailed entries for the approximately 60 plants selected. Unfortunately the reproductions are somewhat crude and show none of the subtlety described by Dr. Karen Reeds, a Linnaeus expert, who spent an afternoon comparing the original with the facsimile. According to Dr. Reeds the original displays a delicate line quality and watercolor washes that have been lost in the reproduction. Fortunately Jane’s text is reproduced both in her original handwriting and in transcription, allowing her careful observation and powers of description to shine through. Her entry for Pokeweed concludes with the following:

The flowers grow in Spickes upon the top, of small naked bran-

ches, set opposite to the Leaves, each flower upon a Foot Stalk

set alternately of with two or three small colour’d Leaves, set

upon the foot Stalks. They are white at first opening, and

likewise their foot Stalks & the Stalk of the spike, but

as the fruit ripens, they all turn a dark red.

Flower in July

The Phytolacca Root is very useful in the use of cancirs

some curious persons in England have endeavoured to propogate this

plant by the Seed braigth from America, but could not produce

any plant from the Seed.

The propagation from this plant is maket in America in the

Dung of birds. For this reason it may be necessary, to give

in Europe the berries to birds, & to plant the Seeds with

the Dung of the fowls, through which they pass intire

Jane’s handwriting is beautiful and the handwritten pages permit me to imagine her at work carefully recording her observations. Unfortunately, the harshness of the 1963 reproductions prevent me from following this flight of imagination very far so, using her handwritten entries, I have made new pages for Jane’s manuscript. The page here is entry No. 93. Phytolacca decandra Poke Weed.

Father Daughter Botany

Jane began identifying and describing plants at the request of her father who himself had been involved in botanical study before abandoning it for other projects. When he returned to the field in his sixties, he felt he was too old and eyesight too poor to continue and he turned to Jane to carry out the work. While it seems Cadwallader’s goals in pursuing botany had at least partly to do with securing himself a name in intellectual circles, Jane’s goals are less easy to define. Initially she seems reluctant and in her first year only described 12 plants, primarily common ones easily found nearby. This seems a weak attempt to perhaps please her ambitious father. In 1753, however, she described 140 plants, all but 8 in extensive detail and then continued to collect in swamps, woods and thickets through 1756 when the Seven Year War made in unsafe to continue. She mastered the Linnaean system and proved to have remarkable powers of observation and description surpassing her father’s efforts in both quantity and detail. In a period when gentlewomen were expected to be conversant about the new sciences primarily to provide an attentive audience, Jane took on the actual work of scientific enquiry and from all evidence, found that work thrilling.

Jane

This historic marker is located at the entrance to the East Coldenham Elementary School and is one of several in the area related to the Colden family. As the marker indicates, Jane Colden was a botanist and produced a manuscript of her research which is now housed in the British Museum. By the end of 1756 she had classified over 300 local Hudson Valley plants using the system developed by Linnaeus and produced the most complete flora of the region written by anyone before the 19th century. Jane corresponded with John Bartram, Alexander Garden, and other botanists of the era, apparently earning their interest and respect. The students that read this marker commemorating Jane's contribution to science probably walk the very same land where she did her work.