A Region of Astonishing Beauty: Celebrating Botanist Edwin James

August 27, 1797

My darling petal-patters and flora fanatics, today we celebrate the birth of a most remarkable botanical adventurer!

On this day in Vermont in 1797, the world welcomed Edwin James, a man whose passion for plants would forever change how we view the magnificent wildflowers of America's western frontier.

As a strapping young scholar with dirt perpetually lodged beneath his fingernails (much like ourselves, dear gardening comrades), James meticulously compiled the very first Flora of Vermont plants.

A pioneering achievement that deserves a champagne toast at your next garden club meeting, wouldn't you agree?

But our botanical hero didn't stop there, my ambitious seed-sowers! James embarked on one of the first expeditions of the American West, traveling from Pittsburgh to those majestic Rocky Mountains. There, like finding an unexpected volunteer tomato plant in your compost pile, he discovered the mountain Columbine, Aquilegia caerulea—a heavenly blue bloom that eventually became known as the Colorado Blue Columbine and the State Flower of Colorado.

Imagine, my fellow flower-lovers, climbing Pike's Peak as James did on July 13, 1820.

What visions of natural splendor awaited him at those elevations where trees dare not grow!

"A little above the point where the timber disappears entirely, commences a region of astonishing beauty . . . covered with a carpet of low but brilliantly flowering alpine plants. . ."

Don't those words just make your gardener's heart flutter with anticipation?

James' eloquent phrasing, "a region of astonishing beauty," was so captivating that it became the title of Roger Lawrence Williams' 2003 book on the botanical history of the Rocky Mountains.

After satisfying his wanderlust and botanical curiosity, James settled into domestic life in Burlington, Iowa, where he married and established a home that served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Our botanical champion was not only a lover of plants but a champion of human dignity—qualities that should make us all stand a little taller in our garden clogs!

James' earthly journey ended in 1861 following an accident, but his legacy blooms eternal. A monument to his achievements stands proudly on Pike's Peak, and the Des Moines County Medical Society planted Rocky Mountain Blue Columbine on his final resting place in the Rock Springs Cemetery.

Local newspapers described the cemetery as nestled in "the most picturesque part of southeastern Iowa"—a fitting eternal garden for a man who dedicated his life to documenting nature's splendor, wouldn't you say, my she-shed besties?

As we tend our gardens today, let's whisper a word of thanks to Edwin James, whose botanical passion helped document America's wild beauty long before Instagram existed to capture it.