T
his month we honour our South African female plant collectors, botanical artists and amateur botanists for their contributions to botany. During the period of the great pioneering
plant hunters, the 18th and 19th centuries, very few
women received the kind of education that would provide them with that prerequisite knowledge for botanist, a thorough grounding in Greek and Latin. Nor did
women travel with any degree of freedom or independence and many serious botanising women remain unrecorded by history.
Thanks to the practice whereby plants are named after
people for their achievements in the field of botany or
their contribution to the discovery of the plants, some
less known women are commemorated. According to
the rules of Latin grammar the gender of the person
honoured in this way determine the specific epithet: if
named after female the name would end with an “ae”,
“iana” or “iae”, and if named after a male, it would
end with “i”, “ii” or “ia”.
Hester Joubert (1805-1884) is considered as the first
recorded South African-born woman plant collector.
She collector mainly in the Bredasdorp district and in
the area of Soetendalsvlei, but unfortunately little information on her collections is available. It appears that
in the 1800s female collectors sent herbarium specimens in under male names or gave them to male collectors who lodged them in their own names. It is believed that Hester Joubert’s collections are lodged under the names of the collectors Christian Ecklon and
Doll’s rose (Hermannia joubertiana).
https://www.google.co.za/search?
q=Hermannia+joubertiana&biw=1366&bih=651&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0
ahUKEwjJrdP0k63OAhVoJcAKHYfiBLUQsAQIMg#imgrc=0ZChtuVWhYkR-M%3A
Madine Swart
Johannes Mund. She is commemorated in a buchu
(Agathosma joubertiana) and a doll’s rose (Hermannia
joubertiana).
Louise Guthrie (1879-1966) was a botanical assistant
and artist at the Bolus Herbarium, and the daughter of
the mathematician and botanist Francis Guthrie. After
resigning from the herbarium, she lived in Caledon
where she pursued a vision that resulted in the splendid collection of 264 botanical illustrations of South
African Proteaceae. The Bredasdorp lily or fire lily
(Cyrtanthus guthrieae) is named in honour of Louise
Guthrie.
Elsie Esterhuysen (1912-2006) is described as the most
outstanding collector ever of South African flora. As a
botanist at the Bolus Herbarium in Cape Town she was
responsible for an avalanche of botanical discoveries,
but she could never be persuaded to publish the results
of her work under her own name. With 56 species and
2 genera named after her, Elsie Esterhuysen’s botanical
legacy confirms the saying: "if you want to be immortal
collect good herbarium specimens".
Women were also honoured as supportive wives and
daughters by naming plants after them. Susanna Charlotta Louisa (née Steyn), the wife of the Scottish medical doctor and naturalist John Muir, is remembered
in the stinkleaf sugarbush or Susan's sugarbush ( Protea
susannae) and a rootthug (Thesium susannae). After his
retirement in 1923, John and Susanna lived in Riversdal, from where he extensively collected plants of the
Bredasdorp lelie Cyrtanthus guthrieae
http://www.biodiversityexplorer.org/plants/amaryllidaceae/
images/090408CPJed_MG_5581_658w.jpg