Lilian Suzette Gibbs (1870–1925) was a British botanist who worked for the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in London and was an authority on mountain ecosystems.

Education

She studied initially at

Swanley Horticultural College Swanley Horticultural College, founded in , was a college of horticulture in Hextable, Kent, England. It originally took only male students but by 1894 the majority of students were female and it became a women-only institution in 1903. Early his ...

in Kent, UK (1899-1901) and then specialised in botany at the

Royal College of Science The Royal College of Science was a higher education institution located in South Kensington; it was a constituent college of Imperial College London from 1907 until it was wholly absorbed by Imperial in 2002. Still to this day, graduates from t ...

in London, studying under J. B. Farmer. Her postgraduate research was into seeds of the Alsinoideae (

Caryophyllaceae Caryophyllaceae, commonly called the pink family or carnation family, is a family (biology), family of flowering plants. It is included in the dicotyledon order Caryophyllales in the APG III system, alongside 33 other families, including Amaranth ...

). While a student, she collected plants from the European Alps and developed her identification skills with help from the Botanical Department at the Natural History Museum.

Career

Gibbs was employed by the Natural History section of the

in London for her entire career but also collaborated with the Herbarium at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

and undertook histological and plant development work at the Royal College of Science. Expeditions between 1905 and 1915 to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Iceland, Indonesia, Malaysia, South America, the US and Zimbabwe allowed her to see plant life worldwide, and mountain plants were her particular interest. In 1905, she was part of a

British Association The British Science Association (BSA) is a charity and learned society founded in 1831 to aid in the promotion and development of science. Until 2009 it was known as the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA). The current Chief ...

visit to

Rhodesia Rhodesia ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state, unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the ''de facto'' Succession of states, successor state to the ...

(Zimbabwe) and also collected plant material. She visited Fiji in 1907,Ray Desmond (Editor) and explored the flora on the northern slopes of the Mount Victoria range, and then studied the

bryophyte Bryophytes () are a group of embryophyte, land plants (embryophytes), sometimes treated as a taxonomic Division (taxonomy), division referred to as Bryophyta ''Sensu#Common qualifiers, sensu lato'', that contains three groups of non-vascular pla ...

flora of New Zealand on her way home, identifying four new species of

liverwort Liverworts are a group of non-vascular land plants forming the division Marchantiophyta (). They may also be referred to as hepatics. Like mosses and hornworts, they have a gametophyte-dominant life cycle, in which cells of the plant carry ...

in the

Waitākere Ranges The Waitākere Ranges is a mountain range in New Zealand. Located in West Auckland, New Zealand, West Auckland between metropolitan Auckland and the Tasman Sea, the ranges and its foothills and coasts comprise some of public and private land. ...

. She also reported on the destruction of the New Zealand forests to permit grazing on her return to the UK in the Gardener's Chronicle in 1908 and 1909. She was the first woman and the first botanist to ascend

Mount Kinabalu Mount Kinabalu ( Dusun: ''Gayo Ngaran'' or ''Nulu Nabalu'', ) is the highest mountain in Malaysia and Borneo. With a height of , it is the third-highest peak of an island on Earth, the 28th highest peak in Southeast Asia, and 20th most prom ...

in February 1910 while leading an expedition for three months that recorded 15 new plant species. Phillipps, A. & F. Liew 2000. ''Globetrotter Visitor's Guide – Kinabalu Park''. New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd. One outcome of this expedition was to show the importance of New Guinea as a centre for subsequent radiation of plants to south and east. In 1912, she collected in Iceland. 1913 found her in the

Arfak Mountains The Arfak Mountains () is a mountain range found on the Bird's Head Peninsula in the Province of West Papua, Indonesia. The term "arfak" came from ''arfk'' the language of the coastal Biak people, meaning "people who sleep over fire", to refer ...

Dutch New Guinea Dutch New Guinea or Netherlands New Guinea (, ) was the western half of the island of New Guinea that was a part of the Dutch East Indies until 1949, later an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. It contained ...

and she continued to the

Bellenden Ker Range The Bellenden Ker Range, also known as the Wooroonooran Range is a coastal mountain range in Far North Queensland, Australia. Part of the Great Dividing Range it is located between Gordonvale and Babinda. The whole of the range falls within t ...

in Queensland, Australia in 1914 and then returned to London from

Tasmania Tasmania (; palawa kani: ''Lutruwita'') is an island States and territories of Australia, state of Australia. It is located to the south of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The sta ...

in 1915. Her final journey was to South America. Her travels were limited after 1921 due to ill-health and she died on 30 January 1925 at Santa Cruz, on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Gibbs collected many plants new to science. Her specimens are in the collections at the British Museum. Others have named genera and species in her honour. These include the genus '' Gibbsia'' , '' Garcinia gibbsiae'' , '' Racemobambos gibbsiae'' or Miss Gibbs' Bamboo, (

Urticaceae The Urticaceae are a family, the nettle family, of flowering plants. The family name comes from the genus ''Urtica''. The Urticaceae include a number of well-known and useful plants, including nettles in the genus ''Urtica'', ramie (''Boehmeria ...

), and the liverwort species '' Haplomitrium gibbsiae'' and '' Neolepidozia gibbsiana'' Gibbs had the personality and ability to organise and carry out her expeditions successfully but was also remembered for her skill as a hostess at afternoon tea-parties.

Awards

Gibbs was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1905. In 1910 she was awarded the Huxley medal and prize for research in natural science and also joined the Microscopial Society. She became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1919.

Publications

Her publications include: *(1904) Notes on Floral Anomalies in species of ''Cerastium'' ''New Phytologist'' 3 243-247 *(1906) A contribution to the botany of Southern Rhodesia. ''Botanical J. Linnean Society'' 38 425-494 *(1907) Notes on the development and structure of the seed in the Alsinoideae. ''Annals of Botany'' 21 25-55 *(1908) Bio-histological notes on some new Rhodesian species of ''Fuirena'', ''Hesperantha'' and ''Justicia'' ''Annals of Botany'' 22 187-206 *(1909) A contribution to the montane flora of Fiji (including crypograms). ''Botanical J. Linnean Society'' 39 130-212 *(1911) The Hepatics of New Zealand. ''Journal of Botany'' 49 261-266 *(1912) On the development of the female strobilus in Podocarpus. ''Annals of Botany'' 24 515-571 *(1914) A contribution to the flora and plant formations of Mount Kinabalu and the Highlands of British North Borneo. ''Botanical J. Linnean Society'' 42 1-240 *(1917) ''Dutch N. W. New Guinea: a contribution to the phytogeography and flora of the Arfak Mountains, etc''. Octavo Taylor and Francis, London *(1917) A contribution to the phyto-geography of Bellenden-Ker. ''Journal of Botany'' 55 297-310 *(1920) Notes on the phyto-geography and flora of the mountain summit plateaux of Tasmania. ''J Ecology'' 8 1-17 *(1920) The genus ''Calobryum''. ''Journal of Botany'' 58 275

References

* Vickery, R. (December 1999)
Field Notes: Lilian Suzette Gibbs
''Plant Cuttings'', issue 3. *

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gibbs, Lilian 1870 births 1925 deaths Botanists active in Kew Gardens British women botanists British women scientists Employees of the British Museum British mountain climbers British female climbers