Jane Colden

At 41 years old, Jane Colden physical status not available right now. We will update Jane Colden's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

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."

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