The Forgotten Botanist

Sara Plummer Lemmon's Life of Science and Art

By: Wynne Brown

Narrated by: Judy A Steffen

The Forgotten Botanist is the account of an extraordinary woman who, in 1870, was driven by ill health to leave the East Coast for a new life in the West—alone. At 33, Sara Plummer relocated to Santa Barbara, where she taught herself botany and established the town’s first library. Ten years later she married botanist John Gill Lemmon, and together the two discovered hundreds of new plant species, many of them illustrated by Sara, an accomplished artist. Although she became an acknowledged botanical expert and lecturer, Sara’s considerable contributions to scientific knowledge were credited merely as “J.G. Lemmon and wife.”

Wynne Brown chronicles Sara’s remarkable life, in which she and JG found new plant species in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Mexico. They also traveled throughout the Southwest with such friends as John Muir and Clara Barton. Sara also found time to work as a journalist and as an activist in women’s suffrage and forest conservation.

The Forgotten Botanistis a timeless tale about a woman who discovered who she was by leaving everything behind. Her inspiring story is one of resilience, determination, and courage—and is as relevant to our nation today as it was in her own time.

The book is published by University of Nebraska Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

©2021 Wynne Brown (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

WILLA Literary Award Winner in Creative Nonfiction

2022 Spur Award Winner

2022 Top Pick in Southwest Books of the Year

What a life!

This is an extraordinary true story of the hard scrappy life of a woman botanist in the late 19th century. Anyone living in the west with an interest in plants will enjoy this book.
The story is well written and researched.

Great story, poor execution

Great story. Narration is poor and severely impacts the storytelling aspect this book deserves. How the book is read auditorily is really important to how digestible it is, and this is unfortunately a step up from having Microsoft Reader narrate it to you. That becomes .especially important if your subjects are diaries or journal entries, or lists of taxa.

Perseverance

It is so wonderful to have an accounting of sarah’s life. Wynne Brown did since incredible research to bring Sarah back to life for us

Terrible narrator

The story in itself was very interesting, but the performance was horrible. I honestly thought it was read by AI.