Feb 26 2021
When the Garden began a series of expeditions to the Caribbean during the first decades of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Knight Britton stood right at the head of these projects. This was likely in part because of her childhood in Cuba which provided her with a knowledge of the terrain and a familiarity with Spanish. In total, Britton took part in twenty three different botanical expeditions to the Caribbean between 1914 and 1934. She also maintained a strong network of correspondence and specimen exchange with scientists in the region which helped build the NYBG’s collection as well as helped strengthen local collections.
Elizabeth Knight Britton also worked to “domesticate” these tropical locales. An article from the NYBG Bulletin describes a Christmas party that she helped organize for the staff of botanical station in Jamaica, “the new and conspicuous feature being a large tree of Juniperus barbadensis brilliantly lighted and heavily loaded with presents.” Creating a “family-friendly” atmosphere in distant locations would be crucial to framing these botanical stations in the press and to government organizations as permanent, natural, and positive additions to local scientific networks.
Elizabeth Knight Britton wrote a number of articles on her work in the Caribbean, including one on West Indian Mosses, and she authored the section on mosses in both Flora of Bermuda and The Bahama Flora, published by Nathaniel Lord Britton in 1918 and 1920, respectively. Her key role in American botanical explorations of the tropics, and the research that she conducted there in the field of Bryology, led to one genera of mosses, fifteen species of plants, and one animal being named for her. She certainly helped drive the American public’s interest in the botany of the Caribbean through her many lectures and her publications on the region. In some ways, then, American politics in the Caribbean throughout the first half of the twentieth century were shaped by young Elizabeth’s explorations of the mosses and ferns on the grounds of a Cuban sugar plantation.
