Jane Colden

Career

Between 1753 and 1758 Colden catalogued New York's flora, compiling specimens and information on more than 400 species of plants from the lower Hudson River Valley, and classifying them according to the system developed by Linnaeus. She developed a technique for making ink impressions of leaves, and was also a skilled illustrator, doing ink drawings of 340. For many drawings she wrote additional botanical details as well as culinary, folklore or medicinal uses for the plant, including information from indigenous people. 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. I believe she is the first lady that has attempted anything of this nature." In this instance Colden was recognized as what she is known today by the Dictionary of American Biography, the first female botanist in America. Colden participated in the Natural History Circle where she exchanged seeds and plants with other plant collectors in the American colonies and in Europe. These rounds with the Natural History Circle encouraged Jane to become a botanist. Through her father, she met and corresponded with many leading naturalists of the time, including Carolus Linnaeus. One of her descriptions of a new plant, which she herself called Fibraurea, was forwarded to Linnaeus with the suggestion that he should call it Coldenella, but Linnaeus refused and called it Helleborus (now Coptis groenlandica).

In 1753 Colden discovered the plant which is now known as Hypericum virginicum and proposed a name after the prominent botanist Alexander Garden. In her manuscript she wrote that this plant was without an Order under the Linnaean system. In her description Colden wrote, " The three chives only in each bundle, and the three oval-shap'd bodies on the seat of the flower, together with the seat to which the seeds adhere, distinguish this plant from the hypericums; and I think, not only make it a different genus, but likewise makes an order which Linnaeus has not. " However, the name was not allowed because an English botanist named John Ellis had already named the Cape jasmine as Gardenia jasminoides, and was entitled to its use because of the conventions of botanical nomenclature.

In spite of all of Colden's accomplishments, she has never been formally honored by having a taxon named after her. The genus Coldenia is named after her father.

Biologist and anthropologist Brittany Kenyon-Flatt has said "Had she not been a woman, Jane Colden would likely be one of the most famous early American botanists."

Colden's manuscript

Colden's manuscript, in which she had ink drawing of leaves and description of the plants, was never named. 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. Ricketts and Hall (1963) published transcripts of 57 of Colden's plant descriptions with the drawings and index of the original manuscript. They also analyzed and evaluated Colden's work. Her manuscript drawing consisted only of leaves and these drawings were only ink outlines colored in with neutral tint. However, their analysis did say that her descriptions were "excellent-full, careful, and evidently taken from living specimens." Colden's descriptions include morphological details of flower, fruit, and plant structure, as well as ways on how to use certain plants for medicinal or culinary purposes. Some of the descriptions include the month of flowering and the habitat they are found in. Records were written in a legible, consistent hand writing with neatly underlined headings and subheadings. Latin and common names for the plants are given.

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. In her section "Observat" (now known as observations) she pointing out to Linnaeus that "there are some plants of Clematis that bear only male flowers, this I have observed with such care that there can be no doubt about it". This shows the long hours she spent doing observations, which were consistent, accurate and replicable. 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.

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. He wrote in Latin "Flora Nov.- Eboracensis," translated as "Flora of New York," in English.

Her manuscript can be purchased on Amazon or can be borrowed from many libraries across North America, Europe and the UK.

Personal life

Colden married Scottish widower Dr. William Farquhar on March 12, 1759. She died seven years later at the age of 41; in the same year her only child died. There is no evidence that she continued her botanical work after her marriage.

Visitors to her family home noted that Colden made excellent cheese and she recorded them in the document Memorandum of Cheese made in 1756.

Legacy

Americans did not become aware of Colden's manuscript until 75 years later when Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps stated that another female botanist before her was the first American lady to illustrate the science of botany.

The Jane Colden Memorial Garden was constructed in 1957 in her home town by the Garden Clubs of Orange and Dutchess Counties containing species that she had described. This was at what is now Knox's Headquarters State Historic Site in New Windsor, near where she lived and worked. It was maintained by volunteers and, despite individual efforts, reached a poor state of maintenance in the 1990s. In 2014 a project was started to restore the garden.

Sara Stidstone Gronim's article about Colden, "What Jane Knew: A Woman Botanist in the Eighteenth Century", Journal of Women's History 2007, volume 19, no. 3., received the 2008 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, awarded by the History of Science Society.

Poet Jessy Randall included a tribute to Colden in her 2025 collection of poems about women scientists, The Path of Most Resistance.