Inez Clare Verdoorn

Inez Clare Verdoorn (15 June 1896 Pretoria - 1989), was a South African botanist and taxonomist, noted for her major revisions of plant families and genera.

She matriculated in 1916 from Loreto Convent in Pretoria, worked for a while in the office of the Controller and Auditor General before being appointed in 1917 as a herbarium assistant at the Division of Botany and Plant Pathology. Between 1925 and 1927 she worked at Kew as liaison officer for the National Herbarium. On her return to Pretoria, she assumed charge of the herbarium and was promoted to Senior Professional Officer in 1944. Despite having arrived at retirement age in 1951, Miss Verdoorn opted to work on as a temporary staff member until 1968, and thereafter as an unpaid research worker.^[1]

She has more than 200 botanical publications to her credit, including major revisions and appearing mainly in Bothalia, Flowering Plants of Africa, Flora of Southern Africa, Kew Bulletin, and the Journal of South African Botany.

This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation I.Verd. when citing a botanical name.^[2]

Honours and fellowships

• 1952 Senior Capt. Scott Medal by the SA Biological Society
• 1957 President of the SA Biological Society
• 1964 President of Section B of the SA Association for the Advancement of Science
• 1967 PhD (honorary) from the University of Natal

She is commemorated by the Composite genus Inezia Phill., Aloe verdoorniae Reynolds, Senecio verdoorniae R.A.Dyer, Teclea verdoorniae Exell & Mendonça and Volume 28 of the Flowering Plants of Africa, which was specially dedicated to her. Her collected specimens total some 4 000, many collected with Codd, Dyer, Obermeyer and Schweickerdt.

References