Rose Monteiro (née Bassett) (1 May 1840 – 11 February 1898) was a late-19th-century plant collector and naturalist who spent several years in

Lourenço Marques Maputo () is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed ov ...

Delagoa Bay Delagoa is a marine ecoregion along the eastern coast of Africa. It extends along the coast of Mozambique and South Africa from the Bazaruto Archipelago (21°14’ S) to Lake St. Lucia in South Africa (28° 10' S) in South Africa's Kwazulu-Nat ...

, Mozambique. Monteiro was born in London. She married Joachim John Monteiro, a British mining engineer and naturalist. They spent several years in Angola where he husband worked as a mining engineer and naturalist. Then in 1876 they relocated to Lourenco Marques where her husband worked as a labor recruitment agent for the Cape Colony until his untimely death in 1878. Monteiro published 'Delagoa Bay: its natives and natural history' in 1891, where she describes the wide range of flora from the region. One species she describes was a succulent of the aloe family, with very thick mottled leaves and heads of pale pink flowers. Monteiro sent samples to

Kew Gardens Kew Gardens is a botanical garden, botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botany, botanical and mycology, mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1759, from the exotic garden at Kew Park, its li ...

in 1886, where it was cultivated and flowered in 1889. This species was then names after her, Aloe Monteiroæ. Monteiro also collected butterflies which she shared with other collectors, many of which were featured in the book 'South-African butterflies'. She also contributed scientific illustrations of butterflies to the book 'Rhopalocera exotica ; being illustrations of new, rare, and unfigured species of butterflies'.

References

1840 births 1898 deaths Scientists from London 19th-century British botanists British women botanists 19th-century British women scientists People from Portuguese Angola British expatriates in Mozambique People from Portuguese Mozambique British scientific illustrators 19th-century British illustrators British botanical illustrators {{UK-entomologist-stub