Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1 October 1916 in Redondo,

Alentejo Alentejo ( , , ) is a geographical, historical, and cultural region of south–central and southern Portugal. In Portuguese, its name means "beyond the Tagus" (). Alentejo includes the regions of Alto Alentejo Province, Alto Alentejo and Bai ...

– 28 May 2005) was a Portuguese botanist and taxonomist who was married to

Abílio Fernandes Abílio Fernandes (19 October 1906, Guarda, Portugal – 16 October 1994, Coimbra), was a Portuguese botanist and taxonomist from the Botanical Institute at the University of Coimbra who was married to Rosette Mercedes Saraiva Batarda (1916–200 ...

(1906–1994), another Portuguese botanist and taxonomist.

Career

She enrolled at the Escola Secundária Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho in 1928 and graduated in 1941 in Biological Sciences from the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; ) is a public university, public research university in Lisbon, and Portugal's largest university. It was founded in 1911, but the university's present structure dates to the 2013 merger of the former Universit ...

. In June of the same year, attending a Congress of Natural Sciences in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

, she met Abilio Fernandes, who was soon to be her husband. They settled in

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ), officially the City of Coimbra (), is a city and a concelho, municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2021 census was 140,796, in an area of . The fourth-largest agglomerated urban area in Po ...

, after Abilio moved there in August 1941 to take up the position of Museum Director at the

University of Coimbra The University of Coimbra (UC; , ) is a Public university, public research university in Coimbra, Portugal. First established in Lisbon in 1290, it went through a number of relocations until moving permanently to Coimbra in 1537. The university ...

. In November 1947 Rosette was appointed Naturalist of that institution, and remained there for the rest of her career. Rosette proceeded to reorganise and update the classification of herbarium material and published an index of seeds of the Botanical Garden. She went on numerous botanical collecting trips in Portugal, and arranged expeditions to Mozambique with her husband where they made large collections of plants, greatly increasing the herbarium material of the ''Botanical Institute of Coimbra'' and the ''Center for Tropical Research''. Between 1944 and 1991, she attended 41 international congresses. She also held seminars in Spain, France, UK, Sweden and Portugal, while between 1945 and 2000, she published some 250 papers, mainly in the field of

plant systematics The history of plant systematics—the biological classification of plants—stretches from the work of ancient Greek to modern evolutionary biologists. As a field of science, plant systematics came into being only slowly, early plant lore usuall ...

, but also in

karyology A karyotype is the general appearance of the complete set of chromosomes in the cells of a species or in an individual organism, mainly including their sizes, numbers, and shapes. Karyotyping is the process by which a karyotype is discerned by de ...

ethnobotany Ethnobotany is an interdisciplinary field at the interface of natural and social sciences that studies the relationships between humans and plants. It focuses on traditional knowledge of how plants are used, managed, and perceived in human socie ...

and the history of botany. From her considerable work in plant taxonomy, and numerous new combinations, she described more than fifty taxa new to science. Rosette Batarda Fernandes is commemorated in several species, including ''Marsilea batardae'' Launer. Her papers on the karyology of

Angiosperms Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed within a fruit. T ...

were mostly published between 1945 and 1947 in collaboration with her husband Abilio Fernandes. Her contributions to Macaronesian flora were published mostly in the ''Bulletin of the Broterian Society'' and ''Broterian Iconographia Selecta Azoricae Florae''. Noteworthy studies published between 1993 and 1997, were the ''Flora Ibérica'' (Vols. III, IV and V), which include taxonomic treatments of eight genera belonging to the Cruciferae, Crassulaceae, Cucurbitaceae and Malvaceae . She contributed to ''Flora Europaea'', particularly noteworthy papers published in Volumes II (1968), III (1972) and IV (1976), covering the systematic study of 11 genera belonging to the Boraginaceae, Compositae, Labiatae, Malvaceae and Scrophulariaceae. As for African flora, she published 80 papers in journals between 1954 and 2000 - some were ''Conspectus Florae Angolensis'', ''Garcia de Orta'', ''Flora Zambeziaca'' and ''Flora of Mozambique''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandes, Rosette Batarda 20th-century Portuguese botanists Portuguese taxonomists 1916 births 2005 deaths University of Lisbon alumni Portuguese women botanists 20th-century Portuguese women scientists 20th-century Portuguese scientists