Almost Every Plant You Know Was Named By a Man. One Woman is Changing That.
When it comes to plants, she who names the natural world, shapes what we notice, what we value, and ultimately what we save.
Shelves crammed with books; a lone coffee mug on the desk — Dr. Charlotte Taylor’s office looks like any other humdrum workspace. There’s just one big difference: She is surrounded by roughly seven million plants.
They’re not all in her office, of course. Nor are they actually alive. Most are samples, stored in folders in cabinets, on shelves — fragments of once-bright flowers found on the floors of Brazil’s forests or Peru’s coca region.
It’s Taylor’s job — as a botanist and a scientist at the Missouri Botanical Garden — to identify and classify these dried plant samples. If the plant species is newly discovered, she gets to name it. In fact, she’s named over 500 of them, making her one of the most prolific female botanists living today.In a world overshadowed by war, oil shocks and the unknowns of AI, it’s easy to forget plants, forever pushing up through pavement cracks or silently leafing out each spring.
But biodiversity is declining faster than at any time in human history — a loss the World Health Organization (WHO) describes as a “direct threat” to human health. That’s because every lifeform on Earth, from tiny bacteria to vast forests, work together to provide food, medicine, fresh water, energy and countless other benefits. Nature is vital for our survival, yet one million animal and plant species are facing the threat of extinction, largely due to deforestation and climate change.
Without care, we might miss the next dementia-treating snowdrop or Madagascar periwinkle, known for its cancer-fighting properties. You can’t protect what you don't yet know exists.
Taylor, then, is doing vital work. For most of botanical history, however, it’s a field that has largely been dominated by men. But that narrowness isn’t just a question of fairness, it’s a matter of survival: (S)he who names the natural world, shapes what we notice, what we value, and ultimately what we save. In a biodiversity crisis that still doesn’t get the attention it deserves, this is mission-critical.
“We need to know about plants,” says Taylor, simply. “We depend on plants.”
Some say botany dates back to the Stone Age, with the urge to study and name plants as old as the human race. But it boomed during the Victorian era — in fact, Queen Victoria’s grandmother, Queen Charlotte was a particular enthusiast — when there was a frantic hunt to “collect and systematize nature in all its variety,” writes Ann Shteir, senior scholar at York University in Canada.
The field became increasingly popular and widely associated with women, in part because Victorian society viewed the study of flowers as pious and pure. At the time, botany was considered a safe, socially acceptable science for women to pursue — think genteel ladies pressing flowers into heavy books. But as they studied and illustrated plants, so grew the opportunities to publish their findings and views, giving them authority as well a path into the male-dominated world of science, adds Shteir.
As the field became more notable, interest in it grew, and by the 19th century, men also wanted in, which pushed so-called "amateur" women out. The science was increasingly viewed as a “professional” activity for specialists and experts. In 1829, John Lindley, the first professor of botany at University College London, was calling for “a new masculinized” botany that didn’t include women.
From there, it became a male preserve, until scientific societies and universities started admitting women throughout the 20th century. As broader fights for women's rights crept into the sciences, they fought for roles in laboratories, research labs and government institutions.
Today, a lot of women work in the field, says Taylor. But plant taxonomy — the science of identifying, classifying and naming plants — has never been well paid or deeply respected in the upper echelons of science, she explains. “It’s considered secretarial work. It’s writing reference books. When was that ever sexy?” says Taylor.
And gender gaps still exist, according to scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London. In 2015, they trawled through their huge botanical author database and found that from 1753 to 2013, women published less than 3% of plant species names — and comprised just 12% of the authors.
It’s a strikingly small proportion in a scientific field that was traditionally considered a feminine pursuit. Dr. Bat Vorontsova, a research leader at Kew and co-author of the original research, doubts much has changed since the report was completed in 2013. It might also explain why the word ‘botany’ still likely conjures up images of Charles Darwin — swashbuckling explorers sailing to far-flung lands in search of new species.
“Rich guys described species for 200 years,” says Taylor.
There were women botanists; they’re just overlooked
Women did make significant contributions to our understanding of plants, though much of their work has been forgotten.
Marianne North, a Victorian-era explorer who eschewed marriage (“a terrible experiment”), traveled to over a dozen countries, including Japan, India and Chile, to paint flowers. At the time, her escapades were a hot topic in the British press, yet today her name is little-known — despite leaving behind one of the U.K.’s finest botanical art collections.
Another is Beatrix Potter, who is better known for her “Peter Rabbit” series than her research on mushroom reproduction. Her work was rejected by leading scientific institutions that excluded women or viewed them as amateurs.
Thankfully, Taylor is still in awe of plants — even after four decades.
“To me, it’s how every single plant does something different. Every single one has a different pollinator or different fruit disperser or a different form on its leaves. Why? And how? How can I keep finding new things no one's seen before?”
Taylor specializes in the Rubiaceae family, a huge group of plants that includes coffee and quinine. As we talk on Zoom, she pulls out a large sheet of paper onto which specimens discovered in 1980s Peru have been pressed and mounted.
To confirm if something is new or not, Taylor needs to compare it to the roughly 13,000 other pre-existing Rubiaceae species. It’s basically detective work, and it can take decades.
As for her favorite name she’s invented? There are many, she says, but she likes ‘Psychotria saltatrix,’ the latter half meaning ‘jump’ in Latin — a nod to the species’ ability to seemingly leap borders after being discovered in the mountains of Costa Rica and Colombia.
She points out that naming a plant after herself would be considered “tacky” by today’s standards. For centuries, however, men did just that. One study, from last year, found just 6% of flowering plant genera (a taxonomic rank, such as roses) named after people honored women. Among that figure, more than a third weren’t even real women — the plants were named after goddesses and nymphs. By contrast, plants were historically named after living, breathing kings and botanists.
Even if there aren’t necessarily major differences in the way men and women name plants, the gender gap is "quite subtle and unexamined,” says Vorontsova, the research leader from Kew. “I mean, role models have a lot of impact.”
As Vorontsova points out, gender isn’t the only issue at play. “We've been discussing white people naming plants from tropical countries, haven't we, mostly?”
Some also argue taxonomy is a dying field. Why bother spending decades trying to name a plant? It may be slow, laborious work, but it’s vital. About 2,500 new plant and fungi species are identified every year, with the hopes they will provide new sources of food and medicine. Scientists at Kew, meanwhile, say the race is on to hunt down the estimated 100,000 plant species that are still unknown before they’re lost forever.
Without botanists like Taylor, we stand little chance of discovering — or saving — them.
The good news? Plants will always wait for you, she says, you just have to go find them.
Josie Cox
