Scientific career and contributions
Prior to taking her first step into a more public sphere of botany, Morris spent her days cultivating the botanical garden behind her home with native plants from along the Wissahickon and those gifted from friends. She sent preserved specimens to and exchanged seeds with botanists, including Myosotis scorpioides, also known as the true forget-me-not, which she helped distribute across the U.S.
In 1842, she began collaborating with William Darlington, a doctor and politician with a passion for botany, who introduced her to a wider network of botanists and the opportunity to have her specimens in collections worldwide. Darlington introduced Morris to Asa Gray, a botanist and Professor of Natural History at Harvard. Over the course of Gray’s career Morris would send him specimens that helped maintain his standing in the global botanical networks. One such plant was a rare fern, the Asplenium pinnatifidum or lobed spleenwort, which she found along the Wissahickon. Morris’s specimen was then forwarded to Kew Gardens in England. Later Asa would also send Morris’s specimens to the St. Petersburg Imperial Garden. In gratitude he would send Morris seeds that she could plant in her own home garden.
Morris was known for her ability to network and support the new generation of botanists. Asa Gray connected her to one of his students Daniel Cady Eaton who she maintained correspondence with and shared favorite specimens including the Lygodium palmatum and her favorite, the lobed spleenwort. Unfortunately urbanization around Germantown was destroying the spleenwort’s habitat and Morris no longer knew where to find fresh specimens, so had to settle with sending pressed ones.
Morris's observations about dandelions, once dismissed by Asa Gray, were finally published in a catalogue of plants from Delaware by botanist and businessman Edward Tatnall. She has noticed that the stem of taraxacum offincinale, or common dandelion, lay down in the grass after flowering. They would rise again in the morning, then bend over again in the evening. Only after it has fully gone to seed did it stand up completely straight to allow its seeds to disperse. A reviewer of Tatnall’s catalogue in the Gardener’s Monthly praised Morris saying that he believed nobody else had ever made this observation. Morris herself became a regular contributor to the magazine, this time avoiding the lens of domesticity. She focused on botanical facts and gardening advice. One of her articles provided details about the Rose of Jericho, a fern-like desert species also known as a resurrection plant due to its ability to withstand extreme dryness by going dormant, then revive years later with moisture. During a series of articles Morris also touted the benefits of having land tortoises in your garden as a natural way of managing slugs and snails. During her life she kept half a dozen tortoises as pets.
During this time Morris further expanded her network by befriending Dorothea Dix, an advocate for reform in mental asylums with an interest in botany. Dix would collect pressed flowers for Morris on her travels around the country visiting asylums.
Over the course of her life Morris wrote prolifically, but preferred to do so anonymously. “E.S., “Americanus," "A Friend to Farmers," "E.,""E.C.,” and “M,” were among her most used pseudonyms and there may have been others. She contributed at least 77 articles to American Agriculturist between 1845 and 1849. A.B. Allen, the journal's editor, was so impressed by the Morris sister’s work he created a “Ladies Department” to facilitate more content for women.
The Morris sisters became adept at writing about traditionally feminine activities through the lens of science, inviting other women to explore their environments in new ways. Morris was reserved in her personal correspondence with other botanists but opinionated and straightforward in her anonymous writing. This anonymity provided Morris and her sister Margaretta the ability to establish themselves as science writers for a broader audience without risking their social reputations.
Morris became a specialist in illustrating carnivorous pitcher plants found in bogs. Her drawings of the Nepenthes rafflesiana were published in the Philadelphia Florist and the Horticulturist Journal.
During her travels along the East Coast, Morris collected algae specimens,. one of which she sent to Irish botanist William Henry Harvey, who was working on a volume for the Smithsonian about North American algae. The specimen, which arrived an olive green color when dry and turned dark green once damp again, was something Harvey had never seen before. He was so impressed he named the species Cladophora morrisiae in her honor.
Later in her life when hiking along the Wissahickon was not as feasible Morris leaned into a longstanding affection for ferns. She acquired two Wardian cases, elaborate glass terrariums popular at the time. These allowed Morris to control humidity, temperature, and soil content in order to cultivate ferns year round. She kept one in her parlor for exotic ferns and a second in her bedroom for rare North American species. Through her fern collecting Morris became acquainted with Prussian botanist Augustus Fendler, and supported his botanical collecting career as he traveled in Venezuela. He in turn would send her rare fern varieties from the region.
