Flora's Fieldworkers: Women and Botany in Nineteenth-Century Canada

When Catharine Parr Traill came to Upper Canada in 1832 as a settler from England, she brought along with her ties to British botanical culture. Nonetheless, when she arrived she encountered a new natural landscape and, like other women chronicled in this book, set out to advance the botanical knowledge of the time from the Canadian field. Flora’s Fieldworkers employs biography, botanical data, herbaria specimens, archival sources, letters, institutional records, book history, and abundant artwork to reconstruct the ways in which women studied and understood plants in the nineteenth century. It features figures ranging from elite women involved in imperial botanical projects in British North America to settler-colonial women in Ontario and Australia – most of whom were scarcely visible in the historical record – who were active in “plant work” as collectors, writers, artists, craft workers, teachers, and organizers. Understood as an appropriate pastime for genteel ladies, botany offered women pathways to scientific education, financial autonomy, and self-expression. The call for more diverse voices in the present must look to the past as well. Bringing botany to historians and historians to botany, Flora’s Fieldworkers gathers compelling material about women in colonial and imperial Canada and Australia to take a new look at how we came to know what we know about plants.

About the Author :
Ann Shteir is professor emerita and senior scholar in gender, feminist, and women’s studies at York University.

Review :
“Refreshingly interdisciplinary, Flora’s Fieldworkers is replete with new information and insights, even on known figures like Dalhousie and Traill. The volume offers innovative perspectives on women’s involvement in botany and plant culture, making strides in the historiography on science in Canada and the fields of women, gender, and science.” Donald L. Opitz, DePaul University “[Flora’s Fieldworkers] challenges the equation of ‘amateur’ with ‘unskilled’ and ‘insignificant’ and brings women botanists out of the shadows, giving their rigorous investigations the scientific credibility they deserve. This fascinating gathering of academic essays shows women collectors as astute observers and appreciators of plants in the wild.” Literary Review of Canada “Flora’s Fieldworkers is a richly stimulating collection of studies looking at specific 19th-century Canadian (and Australian) women from a wide variety of situations who were engaged with the plant world in a wide variety of ways, and often under- or even unappreciated. It provides welcome views into Canadian botanical, cultural, and social history.” Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries “Flora’s Fieldworkers is an ambitious collection of new scholarship on women’s botanical labor in nineteenth century Canada. Excitingly interdisciplinary and broadly accessible, this new volume is a significant contribution to the study of gender, identity, and class in early histories of women and science.” Isis “Excitingly interdisciplinary and broadly accessible, this new volume is a significant contribution to the study of gender, identity, and class in early histories of women and science. Flora’s Fieldworkers will be invaluable to future work on women’s botanical study throughout the British colonies and will surely become a model for the kinds of scholarly labor possible through truly interdisciplinary research into the history of women in science.” Isis « Cet imposant et très bien documenté ouvrage nous transporte au cœur des liens qui unissent les femmes et la nature. Le livre place la position féministe comme fil conducteur des découvertes, des initiatives et des travaux de nombreuses femmes dans le domaine. Avec un angle méconnu, ce livre élève assurément nos connaissances historiques à un autre niveau. » Quatre-Temps "Flora’s Fieldworkers is definitely worthy of attention from those interested in feminist studies, the history of botany, or Canadian history." Archives of Natural History