Mary Elizabeth Barkworth (born 1941, Marlborough, England) is an American

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

and

professor emerita ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

Utah State University Utah State University (USU or Utah State) is a public university, public land grant colleges, land-grant research university with its main campus in Logan, Utah, United States. Founded in 1888 under the Morrill Land-Grant Acts as Utah's federal ...

in Logan, Utah.

Education and career

Barkworth has a B.Sc. from the University of British Columbia, and went on to teach school in British Columbia after graduation. She has an M.Ed. and a Ph.D. in 1975 from

Western Washington University Western Washington University (WWU or Western) is a public university in Bellingham, Washington, United States. The northernmost university in the contiguous United States, WWU was founded in 1893 as the state-funded New Whatcom Normal School, s ...

where she worked on variation in ''

Brodiaea ''Brodiaea'' , also known by the common name cluster-lilies, is a monocot genus of flowering plants. One school of thought places the genus in the family , while another school of thought places it in the subfamily Brodiaeoideae of the family ...

''. Following her Ph.D. she worked with

Agriculture Canada Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC; sometimes Ag-Canada; )''Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada'' is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food (). is the department of the ...

until moving to Utah State University in 1979, where she also served as the director of the Intermountain Herbarium. Barkworth retired in 2012. Barkworth is known for her work on

grasses Poaceae ( ), also called Gramineae ( ), is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos, the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in ...

, particularly members of the

Stipeae The Stipeae are a tribe of grasses within the subfamily Pooidae, with up to 600 described species. Description The defining morphological features of the Stipeae include single-flowered spikelets lacking a rachilla extension, and the lemmas ( ...

and

Triticeae Triticeae is a botanical tribe within the subfamily Pooideae of grasses that includes genera with many domesticated species. Major crop genera found in this tribe include wheat (see wheat taxonomy), barley, and rye; crops in other genera includ ...

. She also had responsibility for production of the two grass volumes in the ''

Flora of North America The ''Flora of North America North of Mexico'' (usually referred to as ''FNA'') is a multivolume work describing the native plants and naturalized plants of North America, including the United States, Canada, St. Pierre and Miquelon, and Greenla ...

''. Barkworth has worked to digitize collections at OpenHerbarium.org, which includes collections from Pakistan and Somaliland. In 2013 Barkworth established a collaboration with the Daggett County Jail whereby inmates helped catalogue specimens through a collaboration between the herbarium and the jail.

Selected publications

* * *Review of ''Flora of North America'' *

References

External links

OpenHerbarium.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barkworth, Mary 1941 births Living people 21st-century American botanists Agrostologists Western Washington University alumni Utah State University faculty University of British Columbia alumni