Kate Furbish, The Flora of Maine. 'Burdock'. Vol. 7. Unpublished scrapbooks (16 vols.); Brunswick, Maine, 1870-1908.
Chiefly pencil and watercolor.
Furbish, a self-taught botanist who grew up in Brunswick, Maine, devoted her adult life to collecting, drawing and classifying the plants of Maine. In the course of her avocation, she amassed a vast collection of plants, ferns and fungi, which she preserved by pressing and drying, and documented each with illustrations in pencil and watercolor. Her exhaustive explorations and the meticulous detail of her drawings came to be highly regarded by preeminent members of the scientific community, including Asa Gray, Sereno Watson and Merritt L. Fernald of Harvard. Furbish presented her collection of drawings and paintings, including 1,326 images in sixteen scrapbook volumes, to Bowdoin College in 1908, and her dried specimens to the New England Botanical Club (now held by the Harvard University Herbaria).
Gift: Kate Furbish.