A naturalist and botanical illustrator, Elsie Louise Shaw (1862-1940) collected eastern North American wildflower specimens for Harvard University’s Gray Herbarium, the University of Maine and the New England Botanical Club, often painting watercolors of the them while in the field. Shaw provided 48 full-page color plates for the first field guide to North American wildflowers, How to Know the Wild Flowers (1893) and 32 full-color plates for According to Season (1902), both written by Frances Theodora Parsons. Following her death, Shaw’s family donated eight folios of her paintings, dating from 1887–1934 to the Gray Herbarium.

View Shaw’s illustrations in the digital archives of Harvard University’s Gray Herbarium.

Image courtesy of the Gray Herbarium.