Soejatmi Dransfield (born 1939) is an

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

-born British plant

taxonomist In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...

specializing in

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of evergreen perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family. The origin of the word "bamboo" is uncertain, ...

s and currently honorary research fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, UK.

Early life

Soejatmi Soenarko was born in

Nganjuk Nganjuk Regency is a regency ''(kabupaten)'' of East Java Province, Indonesia. It bordered Bojonegoro Regency in the north, Jombang Regency in the east, Kediri Regency in the south, and Madiun Regency in the west. It covers an area of 1,224.33 s ...

, Indonesia in 1939.

Education

Dransfield got her first degree in

Plant Taxonomy Plant taxonomy is the science that finds, identifies, describes, classifies, and names plants. It is one of the main branches of taxonomy (the science that finds, describes, classifies, and names living things). Plant taxonomy is closely alli ...

from the Academy of Agriculture, Ciawi,

Bogor Bogor ( su, , nl, Buitenzorg) is a city in the West Java province, Indonesia. Located around south of the national capital of Jakarta, Bogor is the 6th largest city in the Jakarta metropolitan area and the 14th overall nationwide.University of Reading The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...

in the UK, her thesis entitled Revision of ''

Cymbopogon ''Cymbopogon'', also known as lemongrass, barbed wire grass, silky heads, Cochin grass, Malabar grass, oily heads, citronella grass or fever grass, is a genus of Asian, African, Australian, and tropical island plants in the grass family. Some ...

'' (

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

Career

Dransfield began her career as a staff member of Herbarium Bogoriense, Bogor in Indonesia. After completing her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

, she went back to working at Bogor and continued working on bamboos. She moved to the UK in 1978 to continue her research on bamboo taxonomy including the generic delimitation of the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by th ...

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

bamboos. She writes on the account of bamboos from

Malaysia Malaysia ( ; ) is a country in Southeast Asia. The federation, federal constitutional monarchy consists of States and federal territories of Malaysia, thirteen states and three federal territories, separated by the South China Sea into two r ...

Thailand Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is b ...

and

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. Her appointment as an honorary research fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden was a recognition of her work on the bamboos. Together with her husband

John Dransfield John Dransfield (born 1945) is an honorary research fellow and former head of palm research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom, as well as being an authority on the phylogenetic classification of palms. Dransfield has written or ...

, she traveled to

South East Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, south-eastern region of Asia, consistin ...

and Madagascar. They presented their research on bamboos at the Plant Resources of South East Asia meeting in Jakarta. Dransfield's efforts resulted in the identification and description of forty two erect bamboo

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

. In 1993 and 1994, Dransfield collected specimens of ''

Schizostachyum ''Schizostachyum'' is a tall or shrub-like tropical genus of bamboo. They are natives mostly of tropical Asia and Papuasia, with a few species in Madagascar and on certain islands in the Pacific. A few have become naturalized in other t ...

'' and ''

Dinochloa ''Dinochloa'' is a genus of tropical clumping high-climbing bamboos in the grass family. These species bear zigzag culms and fleshy fruits. They are found in the hill forests and lowland dipterocarp forest of southern China, Southeast Asia, a ...

'' from

Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, ...

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

which she used to study, revise and publish articles. This was a three-year project on bamboos “Field guide for the identification of erect bamboos grown in the Philippines and helped collect materials for taxonomy and updated nomenclature. At the Kew Herbarium, her primary research is on the

paleotropical The Paleotropical Kingdom (Paleotropis) is a floristic kingdom comprising tropical areas of Africa, Asia and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), as proposed by Ronald Good and Armen Takhtajan. Part of its flora, inherited from the ancie ...

bamboos. Along with a team of other botanists, Dransfield has worked to identify sixty species of bamboos by carefully studying the bamboo trunks, leaves, and shoots through a software program written by French professor Regine Vignes Lebbe. The bamboo genus ''

Soejatmia ''Soejatmia'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Poaceae. It just contains one species, ''Soejatmia ridleyi'' (Gamble) K.M.Wong Its native range is from the peninsula of Thailand to Malaya. The genus name of ''Soe ...

'' from Malaya and Thailand, has been named after her. She married Dr John Dransfield in Malaysia (1977).

Selected publications

* A New Species and a New Combination of ''Cyrtochloa'' *''Sirochloa'', a New Bamboo Genus from Madagascar (Poaceae-Bambusoideae) *''Cyrtochloa'', a New Genus of Bamboo (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from the Philippines *''Valiha'' and ''Cathariostachys'', Two New Bamboo Genera (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from Madagascar *Notes on ''Bambusa diffusa'' (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from Luzon, Philippines

Books

* The Bamboos of Sabah *Plant Resources of South-East Asia: Bamboos. no 7

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dransfield, Soejatmi British botanists 1939 births Living people 20th-century births Indonesian biologists Indonesian women scientists Alumni of the University of Reading Botanists active in Kew Gardens