Flora of Jamaica Illustrated by Helen Adelaide Wood

“It is the fairest island eyes have beheld; mountainous and the land seems to touch the sky.”
Christopher Columbus, 1494

So said the European navigator, who lost his way and mistook the Americas for India, about the island of Jamaica. Nobody is perfect, and at least he had the sense to know a good place when he found one.

The fairest island, where the indigenous Taíno inhabitants were living their best lives, and minding their own business. However, once the Doctrine of Discovery had moved through the region like a hurricane, and various trades brought European fortune seekers, the economic potential of the botanical nature on the island was bright in colonial eyes.

Back In the Day

In a time without social media, it was the detailed water color paintings, and pen and ink drawings which captured the imagination of the public. The scientific and business community were intrigued by the illustrations of newly discovered specimens of flora and fauna dispatched to the home country. An environment could only be captured and shared through the talents natural history illustrators like Helen Adelaide Wood.

Known today, as one of the most talented, and prolific natural history illustrators to capture the abundant flora and fauna of the island of Jamaica. Jamaica’s first woman of nature illustration, Helen Adelaide Wood, (1860-1927) was born to Creole British parents in Kingston, Jamaica in 1860, only 10 years after women ceased to be legally classified as chattel, so her rise in the world of botanical illustrators is even more remarkable as a resident of a British colony during that time.

Family Ties

There is little information about her early life. However, her Cayman island born father, John Jarret Wood (1823-1881), was the author of: Jamaica: Its History, Constitution, and Topographical Description published in 1884, (Public Library) an all encompassing study of the island’s topography, and geography. His scholarship was probably influential in her choice of career and ability to earn a living from it as a single woman in that era.

It could not have been easy to be a female natural history illustrator in the 1800’s as it was a field dominated by men. Many of the early illustrations were used to assist with herbal identification for medicinal purposes, and included annotations and anatomy. Wood’s work is known for its exceptional detail.

The ability to earn a living from her work would have depended on commissions from well known, and well placed men in the botanical and scientific fields. It is due to the reproductions of prints from botanical publications such as Flora of Jamaica, Fawcett and Rendle (1910), and the Cactaceae, by N. L. Britton and J. N. Rose, (Public Library) that we are able to view and appreciate her talent today.

Economic Botany

These were heady colonial times with new and exotic discoveries broadening the horizons of science led by naturalists from Victorian Britain.

The founder of the Museum of Ecomonic Botany (1847), William Hooker, as Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (1865-1885) followed the industrial driven mandate of the times to find and exploit plants for profit. Beautiful illustrations of flora and their economic potential were incentives to investors. Many plantations of non natives species were established across the colonies for the sole benefit of the home countries.

Legacy

Helen Wood’s work is a beloved legacy in a time of disappearing flora and fauna. In the beauty and detail of her art she captured what once was and could be again on the island of Jamaica. In her later life, she worked at the Institute of Jamaica, Botany Department, Natural History Museum of Jamaica, for 15yrs, and is credited as being one of the first women museum workers in the Caribbean. It is where you will find the repository of hundreds of her outstanding works.

Resources

Natural History Museum of Jamaica
For all any questions on Jamaican flora and fauna, call or visit the Natural History Museum of Jamaica, 10-16 East Street, Kingston. Tel: 922-0620-6. Email: info@nhmj-ioj.org.jm

DBpedia: https://dbpedia.org/page/Helen_Adelaide_Wood

Genealogy: https://www.geni.com/people/Helen-Wood/6000000113316385919