March is Women’s History Month. With the many strides women have made, we chatted with a few of our women in science at the Garden about their careers, inspirations, and advice.
Get to know the women of the Library & Herbarium department!
The Peter H. Raven Library is vital to the Garden’s mission “to discover and share knowledge about plants and their environment, in order to preserve and enrich life.” It serves as an invaluable and irreplaceable resource that supports the work of Garden scientists, students, and researchers from around the globe seeking to better understand, identify, classify, and conserve plants.
The Missouri Botanical Garden’s Herbarium is one of the world’s outstanding research resources for specimens and information on bryophytes and vascular plants. The collection is limited to these two major groups of plants. As of 2018, the collection has nearly 7 million specimens.
The Herbarium at MO is divided between two buildings. The Bryophytes, Pteridophytes, Gymnosperms, Monocots and Dicots through the Fabaceae (family 128) are located in the Lehmann Building, at the south end of the Garden grounds, while Dicot families from Pandaceae (family 128A) through Asteraceae (family 280) are in the Bayer Center (4500 Shaw Blvd).
What do you do at the Garden?
Most aspects of maintaining, organizing and curating the herbarium: collecting plants, filing the collections, correcting data, updating data with current research results (TROPICOS), distributing duplicates to other herbaria, handling requests for loans, or data downloads to further botanical research here at MO with our staff and outside organizations, universities, botanical gardens, etc. with whom we collaborate.
What’s been a highlight of your career?
The opportunity to collect plants in many countries including very fun and thorough work in the US when areas were in full bloom. I have been lucky enough to work in Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Belize, Honduras, Peru, Ecuador, Ghana, Zambia, Nepal, Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan and Singapore and most importantly making and maintaining connections and collaborations with local botanists, students etc.in those wonderful places.
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
The women of the suffragette movement who worked relentlessly, went on hunger strikes, even gave up their lives to get US women the right to vote. (passage of the 19th amendment). I have voted in every election, local, national, etc. since 1976 when I turned 18 thanks to these women.
Parting message to girls and women?
Don’t take no for an answer, the world is as yours.
What do you do at the Garden?
I work with Asian plants. As a herbarium curator, I make sure that the collection under my care is maintained in the best possible conditions to support botanical research worldwide; as a researcher, I study the taxonomy and conservation of various plant groups, with a focus on the families Ebenaceae (ebonies and persimmons) and Gesneriaceae (African violets and gloxinias).
What’s been a highlight of your career?
I’ve been lucky to work in some of the greatest botanical institutions in the world and meet some real “botanical royalty”, but my proudest moment was when my first PhD student passed his thesis defense. At that point, I felt that I had established my legacy, at last.
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
There’s no doubt that women in science have a much tougher life than their male counterparts, for many reasons. Despite that, I have many female colleagues whose inextinguishable passion for plants has kept them going, making a difference in the present and future. They all inspire me every day, with their strengths, struggles, achievements, and kindness.
Parting message to girls and women?
To all out there, botany needs you! Whatever your gender, language, skin colour, etc., science needs to hear diverse voices.
What do you do at the Garden?
I take care of the new Peruvian plant specimens in the herbarium. When our team in Peru collects new specimens, they send several duplicates of each collection to me. I then locate scientists around the world who are experts in each plant family and send those specimens to them for their studies, which increases our knowledge about the biodiversity of Peru so that this diversity can be better conserved.
What’s been a highlight of your career?
Presenting my research on Trifolium (clovers) in a seminar for my colleagues in Science and Conservation at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
My sister. She’s a music educator who devotes so much work time – and free time – to spreading the love of music. She puts so much care and passion into everything she does, and I aspire to be as dedicated and ambitious as her.
Parting message to girls and women?
Be your authentic self. Don’t dial down the qualities that make you who you are.
What do you do at the Garden?
I work in the Herbarium, where I help to digitize plant records in the over 8 million specimen collection of plants! I have worked on parts of the Fern collection, Texas and Oklahoma plants, and now on the Asian plants project, where I image and transcribe the label information associated with the specimen.
What’s been a highlight of your career?
It was amazing to see a digitization project from start to finish with the Texas and Oklahoma (TORCH) project. I started the project about a year ago, and have seen every plant family be completed in record time, along with the contributions from the rest of the data processor team. This will be so important for researchers in Texas and Oklahoma to have access to our collections to aid their vital research!
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
I really admire Greta Thunberg, as she has been a force of nature in advocating for the climate crisis and urging politicians to pass more policies that mitigate further harm to the environment. For someone so relatively young, she has had such a global impact and has been a catalyst for shifting people’s attitudes, which is so inspiring!
Parting message to girls and women?
I think it’s important for all women in science to remember to just keep going! A lot of struggles may pop up, but after every hurdle, there is light on the other side. Sometimes you may have setbacks and projects may go awry, but in the end you always make it through!
What do you do at the Garden?
My job is to make the books that come into our research library accessible, either by putting them into our catalog with useful metadata so they can be found, or by selecting books for digitization and inclusion in the open access Biodiversity Heritage Library.
What’s been a highlight of your career?
A highlight of my career has been the opportunity to work with deep collections of books about subjects I would never have considered otherwise. Last week I heard a passing mention of a book about the plants of the Colosseum in Rome and had the very satisfying knowledge that I could go find it as soon as I got to work.
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
I can’t pick a favorite, but two of the women who inspire me are the 17th century scientist Maria Sibylla Merian, who was among the first people to document the life cycles of insects and their relationships to plants, and librarian and academic Fobazi Ettarh, whose writing has deeply influenced my thoughts on libraries.
Parting message to girls and women?
In the words of Dorothy Sayers, another woman I admire, “If you have found your own value, that is immeasurably the greatest thing.”
What do you do at the Garden?
I oversee the day-to-day operations of the Garden’s Herbarium, one of the most active collections of pressed and dried plants in the world.
What’s been a highlight of your career?
Accessioning our 7 millionth specimen.
Who’s been an inspiration to you?
I have to give a shout out to my mom, Julie Hays. She’s never let me believe that girls can’t do anything that they set their minds to. I’m also inspired by the strong, confident women that I work with everyday.
Parting message to girls and women?
The famous line “Do one thing every day that scares you.” It’s great advice.
Thanks, ladies! We appreciate you tuning in with us this Women’s History Month as we highlighted the Garden’s women in science. We look forward to sharing more with you again in March 2025!
A. Robinson | Digital and Community Engagement Specialist
Thanks to contributing experts.
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