Format: ORAL

Carmen Ulloa Ulloa1, Sabine von Mering2, Lauren Gardiner3, Sandra Knapp4, Heather Lindon5, Siobhan Leachman6, Sarah Vincent4, Maria S. Vorontsova5

1 Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, United States of America 2 Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science, Berlin, Germany 3 Cambridge University Herbarium, Cambridge, United Kingdom 4 Natural History Museum, London, United Kingdom 5 Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, United Kingdom 6 Independent researcher, Wellington, New Zealand

There are several thousand flowering plant genera named for people of all sorts, but those named for men outnumber -by more than 10 to 1- those named for women. In mid-2021, a discussion on social media led to the formation of the multidisciplinary international working group to answer a simple question: how many plant genera honor women? More than two years of mostly virtual interaction, and additional research questions, resulted in the compilation of a new open dataset of 728 flowering plant genera honoring women or female beings (mythological). Some 36% honor mythological beings, and Medusa had six genera named after her, more than any real woman! We verified all of these genera by examining original literature (the majority of which are freely available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library), and have categorized the honorees by profession, status or relationship to the describer. As part of the project, we created or updated Wikidata items for each of these women and genera; we worked closely with IPNI, Tropicos® and BHL receiving and providing feedback and data. Our motivation for the development of this dataset was not only to highlight names of plant genera that honor women, but also to enrich and bridge this information with data that would allow the names, roles and lives of these women – many with fascinating stories –, to be shared more widely with others, both researchers and data sources like Wikidata. Amplification of the contributions of women to botany through multiple means will enable the community to better recognize and celebrate the role of this particular marginalized group in the history and development of science, their contributions to art, and natural history collections.