Jane Colden

Career

Between 1753 and 1758 Colden catalogued New York's flora, compiling specimens and information on more than 400 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 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. "

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.

Colden's manuscript

Jane Colden's sketches of leaves from New York State Plants. No. 123. Spiraea; No. 124. Lycopus Water Hoarhound; No. 125. Mimulus; No. 126. Lobelia'Red C'ardinal' No. 127. Sonchus. 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. 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.