Affectionately known as Sadie, Sarah Frances Price hailed from Bowling Green.

She overcame significant hardships to follow her passions for science and art in the process of becoming a renowned botanist.

She blazed a trail through Victorian society that would pave the way for future generations of curious minds.

Kentucky has a beautiful natural landscape, and Sadie saw that.

And she devoted her entire life to collecting natural specimens and preserving them and preserving Kentucky's landscape as a whole.

She could be such an inspiration to scientists, and artists, and women today if we just knew her story.

Following her lifelong passion for exploring the natural wonders of Kentucky, Sarah Frances Price left a rich legacy that goes well beyond her internationally recognized contributions to the field of botany.

She was a teacher and a painter, and the quality of her work endures because of her meticulous attention to detail.

It was interesting to see just exactly how detailed she was in her sketches.

You could tell the shape of the flower, and you can tell just from her sketch with nothing in the background.

It's not climbing up anything in her sketch.

It's just the plant that it is, in fact, a vining plant.

And once again, with her book on ferns, it is so wonderfully detailed.

You can see each individual serration in the leaf.

You can see all the individual sori on the backs of the leaves.

She took a lot of time with it.

And because of that quality, it is still usable today.

Sadie Price discovered seven new plants in Kentucky, and five of them were named after her.

The most famous is the Viola priceana Pollard, which is a white violet with a purple center.

Only 3% of new land plants have been named by women.

So, for Sadie Price, a woman in the Victorian era, to have so many plants named in her honor, that is just a remarkable achievement.

An achievement made even more remarkable when you consider the hardships Sadie endured during her life.

In 1865 or 1866, she had a mysterious back ailment that left her crippled for over a decade.

And then, in the 1870s, both of her parents died and her brother.

So at that point, it was her and her sister Mary alone in the world.

But Sadie didn't let these challenges dampen her passion for nature or creativity.

In addition to creating her own work, she taught painting and nature classes during this time.

She even created teaching tools for identifying artists and plants.

And then, after being bedridden for over a decade, her fortunes took a turn for the better.

In 1880, she actually traveled to Philadelphia.

She met with Dr.

Weir Mitchell, and over the next six months, she did some mysterious treatment with him and was miraculously cured.

She came back to Bowling Green walking again and simply told everyone that she'd been patched up.

Now that Sadie was mobile, she started taking her students on field trips to study native flora and fauna.

At that time, the creation of Herbarium was at the forefront of botany, and Sadie approached this endeavor with her usual tenacity.

An Herbarium is a collection of dried plants that are scientifically classified.

So, when Sadie was going on these expeditions, she would collect samples, bring them home, and she presented her herbarium at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

And she actually won first prize for her herbarium out of over 100 contestants.

From the 19th to the 21st century, Sadie's work is still relevant to the study of native plants, and it can be traced back to its roots at Western Kentucky University's Green River Preserve.

My work intersects with Sadie's work quite literally.

I worked on a plant named after her, one that she discovered, Apios priceana, which is Price's potato-bean or Price's groundnut.

I was able to do a management project on that particular species.

Price's potato-bean has a big preference for certain woodlands.

It likes well-drained soils.

We find it near streams.

So, my job in this case, to protect the species named after Sadie Price, was to allow little bits of light in.

So, just getting the light that it needs to allow that species to spread and reproduce.

[music playing] It's a testament to her ambition and her skill that she became so well-renowned in the field botany.

And after her death, all of the botanical magazines and newsletters published articles about Sadie and her massive contributions.

As Price's potato-bean has helped to make a comeback along the winding bottomlands of the Green River, Sarah Frances Price's legacy of instilling a passion for nature lives on, and her dedication to success through hard work is a lesson for future generations.