Furbish, Catherine

Catherine Furbish, byname Kate Furbish, (born May 19, 1834, Exeter, New Hampshire, U.S.—died December 6, 1931, Brunswick, Maine), American botanist, who devoted her lifelong energies to documenting and making drawings of the flora of Maine, enriching both scientific knowledge and numerous botanical collections with her legacy.

Furbish grew up in Brunswick deeply interested in the natural flora of her region. Attendance at a series of lectures on botany in Boston about 1860, together with a course in drawing in Portland, Maine, prepared her for her life’s work. In 1870 she set herself the task of collecting, classifying, and making watercolour drawings of the flora of Maine. Freed by an inheritance from her father from the need to make a living, she devoted her life to the work. With boundless energy and courage she traveled the state for 38 years, penetrating the most inaccessible wilderness areas in search of new specimens. Her paintings were extremely accurate and were widely praised by professional botanists.

In 1895 Furbish founded the Josselyn Botanical Society of Maine, of which she served as president in 1911–12. She contributed articles to botanical journals, and in 1908 gave her 16 folio volumes of watercolours, her “Illustrated Flora,” to Bowdoin College. Her large collection of dried herbarium specimens went to the New England Botanical Club, which placed it in the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University, and her collection of ferns went to the Portland Society of Natural History. Two of her own botanical discoveries bear her name: Furbish’s wood aster (Symphyotrichum cordifolium, formerly Aster cordifolius var. furbishiae) and Furbish lousewort (Pedicularis furbishiae).