Isabella McHutcheson moved to Hawaii after her marriage in 1863 to her cousin Francis Sinclair whose family was the first European settlers on the island of Ni`ihau. She was the niece of Elizabeth McHutcheson Sinclair who had famously bought the island of Niihau from King Kamehameha IV for $10,000 in gold in 1864. Isabella was born in Stirling, Scotland in 1840 and from a young age she showed a real artistic ability. Part of her childhood was spent in New Zealand where she first acquired an interest in botany. During the years that her husband Frank ran the family ranch, Isabella Sinclair engaged herself in collecting botanical specimens, painting watercolor sketches of the plants, and preparing a collection that eventually became a book: "Indigenous Flowers of the Hawaiian Islands." She took a keen interest in the plant life of the Waimea and Olokele regions which she compared to the New Zealand species she was familiar with. She painted a series of watercolors and identified each specimen with its botanical name (supplied by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker), natural habitat, Haiwaian name and blossoming period. This book was the first to feature color plates of Hawaiian flowers and plants. Isabella Sinclair documented the authenticity of her 44 colored plates, sending specimens of each plant to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England. The director of the Royal Botanica Gardens encouraged her to publish her work and assisted her in this when she and her husband came to London in 1885. The book received unusual notice for work of an amateur botanist. Reviewers commented that although Mrs. Sinclair did not profess to be a botanist, she was a keen observer and gifted artist as evidenced not only by her drawings but by the written descriptions that accompany them. Even today, Isabella Sinclair's book has more color plates of Hawaiian plants than any other publication in existence. REF. Great Flower Books p. 76; Nissen BBI 1848; Stafleu TL2 12.024 Digitized by Michael B. Thomas. 2008. University of Hawaii, Joseph F. Rock Herbarium.