by Dala

The texts, created by Anne Wollstonecraft, contain not only fantastic scientific renderings of botanist specimens, but also notes about what the plants were used for and what their names meant:

For example, she notes that roots from the soursop tree were used as a fish poisoning antidote, and its leaves as an antiparasitic and antiepileptic. She also suggests that "soursop" comes from a phonetic approximation of the island’s indigenous inhabitants’ name for the tree, suir sach, which could help explain a paradoxical moniker for a fruit described as sickly sweet.

This work is compared to that of Maria Sibylla Merian, who in 1705 published a book that contributed a great deal of knowledge to the field of entomology. The hope is to be able to publish the work in English and a Spanish translation, as well as to have the original on display at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Definitely worth a click through to the article to see the illustrations.