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Amplifying the contribution of women to botany �an analysis of plant genera named after women

Carmen Ulloa Ulloa

Lauren M. Gardiner

Sandra Knapp

Heather L. Lindon

Siobhan Leachman

Sabine von Mering

Sarah Vincent

Maria S. Vorontsova

Alice Eastwood

California Academy of Sciences Archives

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How it started: May 2021

pandemic times

Painting:Portrait of Maria Sibylla Merian by Jacob Marrel, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Collaboration of women

Multidisciplinary international working group
Complementary skills
Belong to overlapping communities
Ability to access specialist libraries
Ability to edit multiple databases
Research to center and celebrate women

Botanists Maria do Carmo Vaughan Bandeira and Mary Agnes Chase, 1929. No known copyright restrictions via the Smithsonian Institution and Wikicommons.

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Carl Linnaeus (1751) Philosophia Botanica

“If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost too.”

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Said to be named the Countess of Chinchón - wife of the 4th Count of Chinchón, Viceroy of Peru in 1638
Cured by tincture of bark of a tree brought from Loja – which then became known as “Countess’s Powder” – later as “Jesuit’s Bark”
Linnaeus took the name from the story in de La Condamine’s 1738

“Sur l’arbre de Quinquina”

Cinchona

quinine

cascarilla

Linnaeus (1742) Genera plantarum

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Genera named for people….

Summary numbers are hard to find….. But that wasn’t the point!
Flowering plant genera – 15,000 to 25,000
Burkhardt (2018, 2022) Verzeichnis eponymischer Pflanzennamen - 16,500 genera of algae, fungi and plants (incl. fossil taxa) named for people
Burkhardt – 5,726 named for real people (4,489 for men, 247 for women); 416 for mythological figures
On Wikidata – 44 women had open, linked data
Where we are now --> 700 women for whom plant genera are named have open linked data on Wikidata

Burkhardt (2018, 2022) https://www.bgbm.org/de/node/3642

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The data

Plant names

Generic name
Only used validly and effectively published names
Status (accepted, synonym, illegitimate)
Identifier(s)
Author(s) (identifiers, nationality, gender)
Publication details

People’s names

Woman’s name (eponym)
Birth/death dates (lifespan)
Identifier(s)
“Occupation”
Relationship to author
Links to protologue

Female beings

Mythology or mythical stories (eponym)
Identifier(s)
“Occupation”
Links to protologue

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Screenshot of Zoom attendees and Google spreadsheet during Women genera meeting. CC BY 4.0 Lauren M. Gardiner, Sandra Knapp, Siobhan Leachman, Heather L. Lindon, Sabine von Mering, Carmen Ulloa Ulloa, Sarah Vincent and Maria S. Vorontsova.

Zoom

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Google Docs/Sheets

Ubiquitous

Collaborative editing

Tracks comments

Exportable in multiple formats

Screenshot of Women Genera Google spreadsheet. CC BY 4.0 Lauren M. Gardiner, Sandra Knapp, Siobhan Leachman, Heather L. Lindon, Sabine von Mering, Carmen Ulloa Ulloa, Sarah Vincent and Maria S. Vorontsova.

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Wikidata for women

Created & enriched Wikidata items

Added links to other databases

Linked women to their publications

Screenshots of the Wikidata items for Mary Agnes Chase and the book Index to Grass Species. CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Verification and DBs

Researched protologues
Verified data in IPNI & Tropicos®
IPNI & Tropicos enriched with data
IPNI & Tropicos added links to BHL
IPNI & Tropicos IDs in Wikidata
Cited IPNI & Tropicos in Wikidata

©MVorontsova

©CulloaUlloa

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Protologues….

Tripp & Darbyshire (2020) Syst. Bot. 45

Brandegee (1894) Zoe 4

Sometimes it’s easy…

Swartz (1798) Fl. Ind. Occid.

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Protologues…..

Sometimes not…

Linnaeus (1767) Mantissa plantarum

Schumann (1900) Fl. Schutzgeb. Südsee

Annotation. “I have named the genus in honour of my esteemed colleague’s wife.”

Nothing, nada …..

Gertrud Lauterbach 1888–unknown

Anne Monson 1726–1776

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BHL was invaluable to this research project as the majority of protologues (over 60%) were openly accessible through this digital library. Thanks!!

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Richard Salisbury

Carl Linnaeus

Constantine Rafinesque

Mythical versus real over time

von Mering S, Gardiner LM, Knapp S, Lindon H, Leachman S, Ulloa Ulloa C, Vincent S, Vorontsova MS (2023) . Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e114408. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e114408

Mythical

Real

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Daphne	6
Medusa	6
Helen of Troy	5
Graziela Maciel Barroso	5
Tecophila Billotti	4
Mary Agnes Chase	4
Dorothy Talbot	4
Io	4
Aphrodite, Athena, Cybele	3
Alicia Lourteig, Alice Eastwood, Dorothy Talbot, Louisa Bolus, Mary Strong Clemens, Elsie Esterhuysen, Félicité de Genlis, Hildegarda Winter, Maria Sibylla Merian	3

Mythical versus real women

Mythical

Real

Chase

Lourteig

Bolus

Eastwood

Barroso

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Visualisation of workflow

Adaption of Figure 1 by von Mering S, Gardiner LM, Knapp S, Lindon H, Leachman S, Ulloa Ulloa C, Vincent S, Vorontsova MS (2023) Creating a multi-linked dynamic dataset: a case study of plant genera named for women. Biodiversity Data Journal 11: e114408. https://doi.org/10.3897/BDJ.11.e114408 CC BY 4.0

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Next: analysis of the data

Other category – includes a variety of occupations from ambulance drivers, writer, librarian to family members to physicists….
Not all women have one occupation – botanical artists and botanists

green occupation

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Conclusions

Women are under-represented in plant naming at the generic level
They are even more under-represented in the data world of celebrating their accomplishments
Mythical female figures top the number of more genera named after them than for women who actually lived
Be explicit about etymology of new names – species and genera
Contribute to resources like Wikidata and Bionomia to amplify diversity in botany
Wikidata: nearly a twenty-fold increase in the number of genera linked to women
Invaluable resource of online databases