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  • News
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    • All Featured Books
    • Book of the Month Series
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Biodiversity Heritage Library - Program news and collection highlights from BHL

All posts tagged with botany

Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Language of Flowers: 19th Century Literary Genre Offered Opportunities for Women Writers of Natural History

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“Language of Flowers”, a popular literary trend in the 19th century, presented the world of botany through dictionaries of flowers and associated meanings, floral poetry and prose, offering a sentimental view of natural history.  These charming books with colorful illustrations of flowers and bouquets are at the intersection of botany, horticulture, natural history, art, poetry, and women’s studies.  This Victorian fad saw many editions of works published, with multiple titles by successful authors.  The following provides a glimpse into the work of four women authors of this genre.

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March 30, 2019byLeora Siegel
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Dorothea Eliza Smith: Resilient Botanical Illustrator

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As we celebrate the role women have played in the natural history sciences, we can find many examples of successful women who have been under-appreciated for the meaningful work they did during their lives. Women like Maria Sibylla Merian, Mary Margaret Smith, and Evelyn Cheesman significantly advanced a variety of sciences, even if they have only recently been gaining attention for doing so. But historic relegation of women has also meant that countless people throughout history were denied the tools to achieve success in these fields. How many women could have been published artists or scientists, if it weren’t for societal expectations that never gave them the chance?

Within the collections of rare botanical texts and seldom seen manuscripts housed at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation is a beautiful work by a largely unknown artist, Dorothea Eliza Smith. Her Fruits of the Lima Market – a collection of watercolors that she completed between 1850 and 1853 – stands out as an exemplary creation made even more impressive by her relative obscurity and the sparse details of her life.

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March 26, 2019byChris Byrd
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

A lifetime among Cacti: Helia Bravo-Hollis

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Four days before becoming a centenarian, Dr. Helia Bravo Hollis passed away, on September 26th, 2001. Her biography is the history of the inclusion of women in the scientific research community and the slow but productive development of academic calling.

Teacher Bravo, as she liked to be called, never bothered or worried about being a pioneer in a discipline at a complicated stage in Mexican history. Although she always had a genuine concern for social inequalities, she believed that only through education this could be changed. To do so, she was a very dedicated researcher and teacher.

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March 22, 2019byMonica Aguilar-Rocha
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History, User Stories

The Legacy of late-19th-Century Emma Jane Cole and her Grand Rapids Flora Lives on in the 21st Century

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Nearly 120 years ago Emma Jane Cole (1901) published Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Surprisingly, this botanical account published in 1901 for the Grand Rapids area remains the most recent comprehensive treatment of the plants specific to our region. And we still use it!

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March 21, 2019byDr. Garrett E. Crow and Dr. David P. Warners
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Discovering Emma J. Cole (1845-1910), Author of the “Remarkably Fine” Grand Rapids Flora

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In the early years of the 21st century, I was delving into the archives of the Grand Rapids Public Museum researching a book to celebrate their 150th anniversary in 2004. Among the lists of men involved in the lyceums and institutes that shaped the beginnings of the western Michigan museum in the 1850s, there finally appears, at the very end of the 19th century, the name of Emma J. Cole, emerging like the first blossom of hepatica on a spring afternoon.

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March 20, 2019byJulie Christianson Stivers
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

Botanical Field Guides of Alice Lounsberry and Ellis Rowan

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Artist Marian Ellis Rowan depicts herself with botanist Alice Lounsberry collaborated to produce several botanical guidebooks. Their three guides are illustrated with pen and ink illustrations as well as full color paintings. Intended to make botanical study accessible for a popular audience, they take an ecological approach by organizing species according to where they habitually grow, from aquatic environments to dry sandy soils.

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March 15, 2019byElizabeth Meyer
Blog Reel, Campaigns, Her Natural History

The Life and Works of Margaret Meen

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The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has been partnering with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation to digitize works by women botanical artists held in Kew’s archives. One of these talented but largely unknown artists is Margaret Meen – whose botanicals graced the walls of royal palaces and scientific academies. In fact, though little remembered or written about today, Meen’s botanicals and her prowess as an instructor of fledgling artists left a lasting impression on British botanical illustration.

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March 14, 2019byChris Byrd
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