Week 9: Fist Blooms of Sping

NATURALIST QUOTE: 

Each week we feature a lesser known naturalist in our Pocket Journal Series.

In this space you will find the full quote and more information about the author. 

Enjoy.

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Kate Furbish, “Maine’s swashbuckling Victorian botanist”

“...were it not for the fact that I can find no plants named for a

female botanist in your manual, I should object to ‘Pedicularis

Furbishae’ for it [naming of a plant for its discoverer] is too often

conferred to be any particular honor...But as a new species is

rarely found in New England and few plants are named for

women, it pleases me.” 

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~In an 1881 letter to Sereno Watson, curator of

Harvard University’s herbarium

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Kate Furbish was born in 1834 and grew up in Brunswick, ME where she developed

a passion for botany and drawing at an early age. She is most known for spending

38 years traveling, often alone, through the Maine wilderness (particularly in Aroostook County) collecting, classifying, and making watercolor drawings of the flora of Maine.

Her extensive plant pressings and highly accurate drawings drew great respect from famous botanists at the time and is still unparalleled in its scope. She is perhaps best known for documenting an endangered plant that was named in her honor, the Furbish’s lousewort. This plant is only found along a 130 mile stretch of the ice-scoured shores of

the St. John River. Famously, re-discovery of this wild snapdragon helped stall and then stop the building of the Dickey-Lincoln dam in 1976, which would have flooded 88,000 acres of northern Maine forests. Kate helped found the Josselyn Botanical Society of Maine, published articles in American Naturalist, and her collection of paintings and drawings were bequeathed to Bowdoin College in 1908. 

“Had I listened to those who discouraged me from going into that part of the state because the Flora would not be likely to repay me for the expense and fatigue, I should be as ignorant as they are of its natural beauties,” she said in a speech for the Portland Society of Natural History in 1883, blithely titled, “An Evening in the Maine Woods.”

See some of her famous drawings here!

Brochure about the rare Furbish’s lousewort ~Maine Natural Areas Program

“It’s not just Furbish’s lousewort. It’s Kate Furbish’s lousewort.” ~U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

“Kate Furbish: Self-taught field botanist and painter” ~ Bangor Daily News

More about Kate Furbish and her work in Maine Encyclopedia 

“An Icey Life on the St. John River” ~ Northern Woodlands