Emma G. Cummings

Emma Gertrude Cummings (December 2, 1856 – October 12, 1940 ) was an American horticulturalist and ornithologist. She was educated at Boston Art School. The following April she published an account of the people and flora of the Bahamas, "A Spring Visit to Nassau" in Popular Science Monthly.

Cummings was the first woman to hold a town office in Brookline, when she was elected a member of the town's tree planting committee, from 1902-1939. Cummings was elected an Associate of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1903. Also in 1903, she gave a lecture to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society about trees in the Southern United States. In 1904 her ornithological pocket guide Baby Pathfinder to the Birds, co-authored with Harriet E. Richards, was described in The Auk as "a convenient and helpful vade mecum", praised in the Journal of Education as a valuable guide that "no beginner or would-be beginner should be without", and cited by the Boston Herald as evidence of Cummings' exemplary status as a "twentieth century woman." Her book Brookline's Trees was praised by The Boston Globe, and the Boston Herald noted that it was "much used by teachers and in schools." Cummings was also a member of the Brookline Historical Society and gave talks to the membership on her travels, such as to Hawaii in 1923, and she was on the science sub-committee of the Brookline Education Society.

Personal life Cummings lived with her sister Mabel Cummings, and died in October 1940 in Westfield, Massachusetts.

Selected works picture from "Baby bird-finder by Harriet E. Richards and Emma G. Cummings Brookline's Trees: A History of the Committee for Planting Trees of Brookline, Massachusetts and a Record of Some of Its Trees, 1938 Baby Pathfinder to the Birds (with Harriet E. Richards), 1904 Trees in Brookline, Massachusetts: Map and Index (with Frances Prince), 1900