Botanic Manuscript of Jane Colden, 1724 - 1766 [First Woman Botanist of Colonial America) de Colden, Jane (edited by H.W. Rickett) - 1963

New York: Chanticleer Press, for the Garden Club of orange & Dutchess Counties, 1963. Illustrated with three portrait plates, many simple line drawings, quarto, pp 205, very clean internally, hessian cloth in very good condition, the dustwrapper is slightly worn, and a little frayed along the top edge. VERY SCARCE. LIMITED EDITION OF 1500 COPIES. [Jane Colden was an American botanist, described as the "first botanist of her sex in her country" by Asa Gray in 1843. Although not acknowledged in contemporary botanical publications, she wrote a number of letters resulting in botanist John Ellis writing to Carl Linnaeus of her work applying the Linnaean system of plant identification to American flora, for which Peter Collinson stated "she deserves to be celebrated". Colden was respected by many prominent botanists including John Bartram, Peter Collinson, Alexander Garden, and Carl Linnaeus. She is most famous for this manuscript, housed in the British Museum, in which she describes the flora of the Hudson Valley in the Newburgh region of New York state, including ink drawings of 340 different species.]. First Edition. Cloth. Very Good/Slightly worn and frayed.