Month: July 2025

by Susan Belfry

A recently published book, “ Flora’s Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada” Ann Shteir (ed.), examines the role women played in plant collection, exploration and the general study of botany in British North America. Although the study of botany was an acceptable activity to women of the 19^th century, it soon became a scientific discipline to be studied at universities and in formal scientific societies. Most archival records, plant lists and published studies were undertaken by men and there were few records of women’s accomplishments. This book brings to light through new archival materials, the important contributions some women made to botanical knowledge in pre-Confederation Canada.

In particular, personal letters show how four women in Canada were collecting plants for William Jackson Hooker, a professor of botany at the University of Glasgow. During the 1820’s and 1830’s they contributed to Hookers’ “Flora Boreali-Americana”, a project to document the plants of British North America, published in 1840.

The four women, all from the colonial elite in Quebec and Newfoundland, are Christian Ramsay (Lady Dalhousie), Anne Mary Perceval, Harriet Sheppard and Mary Brenton. William J. Hooker had commissioned botanical specimens from these women through his connections with the colonial network and personal contacts. He provided specific advice, copies of illustrated plant books and instructions on how to collect and preserve specimens for shipment to him in Glasgow. In his ‘Flora’ book, these women were cited nearly 450 times as sources of information about specific plants collected in Quebec and Newfoundland. Through their elite status in society, these women had the time, ability and ambition to learn about the plants. Here is a brief look at some of their botanical accomplishments.

Christian Ramsay (Lady Dalhousie) – 1786-1839 was the wife of Lord Dalhousie, and had the opportunity to travel throughout the British colony – Halifax, Quebec City and Montreal. She learned plants through books and from field experience working in her estate gardens. Lady Dalhousie was introduced to Hooker in 1825 and for the next three years was sending him plants from the Quebec region. She would collect with family and friends looking for new, rare or different plants than what was known in Britain. Her “approach to nature was empirical and material as she sought to identify, systematically arrange, and catalogue plants she collected”. (Shteir & Cayouette). Hooker cited her 48 times for plants she collected. Some of her specimens are held in the herbaria at Edinburgh and Kew, however, her personal collection of almost 300 specimens from Lower Canada are held in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, Ontario.

Anne Mary Perceval (1790-1876), wife of a colonial administer in Quebec, shared the same botanical interests as Lady Dalhousie and they became friends. Perceval lived on a large estate in Quebec and had the interest, ambition and resources to observe plants. She studied Frederick Pursh’s Flora Americae Septentrionalis and taught botany to her children. Through her connections she corresponded with John Torrey, a botanist in New York, and they exchanged plants and knowledge of plants. It was Torrey who recommended her to Hooker as “a lady of fortune who is an excellent botanist”(Shteir & Cayouette) . By 1825, she and her network of botanical friends were shipping plants to Hooker. She is cited 150 times in Hooker’s ‘Flora’ for plants collected across the Quebec region. Many of her specimens are held in the Darlington Herbarium in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Harriet Sheppard (1786-1858) was one of those botanical friends of Ramsay and Perceval who was also an avid collector of plants and natural history specimens. Along with her husband they were avid naturalists and members of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec. She was sending Hooker wildflowers, shrubs, orchids, grasses, ferns, marine plants and lichens. She is cited in 144 entries of plants in ‘Flora Boreale-Americana’. There is less archival material available because a fire in their estate destroyed her personal herbaria and plant lists. Some of her plant specimens are held in in the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Mary Brenton (1791-1884) was from an elite family in Rhode Island that settled in Halifax. Her father was a lawyer and served as a judge and civil servant in Nova Scotia and eventually Newfoundland. Mary never married and always lived with her parents. Through elite social connections, she knew the Governor Thomas Cochrane, himself a botanical enthusiast, and it was he who introduced Mary to William J. Hooker. Mary became Hooker’s principal collector in Newfoundland and Labrador and from 1830 to 1838 she shipped plants to him. Her father was a travelling judge around the ports of Newfoundland and Mary could accompany him and collect plants from coastal bogs and fens. She is cited in the Flora 102 times for ferns, sedges, grasses. She found some plants that were new to Hooker and he named the gentian, Halenia brentoniana in her honour.

These four women stood out as botanists collecting plants in Lower Canada and Newfoundland for William J. Hooker’s project, Flora Boreali-Americana. They also collected plants for their own herbaria as did other women featured in this book, such as Catherine Parr Trail, Alice Hollingworth and Isabella McIntosh. Botanical albums and botanical art is covered in one essay which enlightened me to two women botanical artists in New Brunswick in the 1870’s. (More on this in another article.) I recommend this book for anyone interested in women botanists in Canada. The bibliography is also extensive and led me to the article by Shteir and Cayouette and also down many different pathways.

References:

Shteir, Ann B. (ed.). Flora’s Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022.

Shteir, Ann B., and Jacques Cayouette. “Collecting with ‘botanical friends’: Four Women in Colonial Quebec and Newfoundland” Scientia Canadensis 41, no.1 (2019): 1-30.