Botany in the Field and in the Garden

Abstract

This chapter deals with two enthusiastic contributors to botany: field naturalist Jeanne Barret and botanical illustrator Madeleine Françoise Basseporte. The chapter notes that these intrepid women deliberately positioned themselves and thrived in their scientific work surrounded by some of the most celebrated naturalists of their day. It then introduces Bernard de Jussieu, generally revered as the “Newton of botany,” George Louis Leclerc, Compte de Buffon, director of the Jardin du Roi, and Louis Antoine de Bougainville who published a treatise on Newton's integral calculus. The chapter tracks how the forceful, tenacious women fashioned unprecedented plotlines for their lives, escaped circumscribed gender roles, and used their resulting freedom to investigate nature from the 1730s through the 1770s. Barret disguised herself as a man to work with botanist Philibert Commerson collecting flora during Bougainville's round-the-world voyage. Basseporte, on the other hand, enriched the work of Buffon and of Bernard de Jussieu by analyzing and depicting the parts of plants to discover the patterns and organizing principles of that science. Finally, the chapter chronicles Barret's and Basseporte's early lives before they came on the scientific scene.