Hunter’s Home

Botany: A Women's Science?

April 29, 1850
Here's a post for this day from Hunter’s Home - the only remaining pre–Civil War plantation home in Oklahoma.

“Emily and Amanda stayed at Araminta's for much of the day. They had a sweet potato roasting and then gathered flowers for pressing. 

Emily kept an herbarium into which she pressed a variety of flowers from her travels. Botany was considered a suitable science for women to learn in the 19th-century and women were expected to understand the nature of the plant as well as classification, etc. 
Women published botanical textbooks and used their knowledge to improve their herbal remedies. Like Emily, women also carried their herbaria with them while traveling to better collect new species.”


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Hunter's Home
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