Women and lichenology in the early twentieth century

Posted on Monday 13 April 2026

The herbarium at the National Botanic Gardens (Ireland) contains a specimen of a crustose lichen, Lecanora gangaleoides dating to 1910. Tucked inside its envelope the late Paul Whelan discovered a short note on the memo paper of the British Museum. Finds like these are rare and very exciting for those working with historic specimens, providing a tangible link between the collector and collected. They remind us that so many stories are lost to the neat bureaucracies of research.

This short note advises the very minor distinctions between Lecanora coilocarpa and Lecanora gangaleoides, advising the herbarium’s assistant as to where to store the specimen.¹ A pretty standard letter for a historian of natural sciences to encounter, until you read the final lines –  singing off, the letter ends with the cryptic line,

JR sends his love and I mine, 
The wind is howling through turret and tree! 
A.L.S

The writer is Annie Lorrain Smith, Britain’s premier Lichenologist for the first half of the twentieth century, ‘JR’ refers to John Ramsbottom, her boss, the Keeper of the Cryptogamic herbarium at the British Museum. But the strange line about the wind? It references a poem called ‘The Sisters’ (1833) by Alfred Lord Tennyson, and narrates a story of murder and revenge. Precisely why this line features in a letter about taxonomy is a mystery still unsolved.

The envelope tells us the addressee is ‘MC K…,’ Matilda Cullen Knowles, who is also the second name on the Lecanora specimen. These two women formed a formidable pair of lichenologists, integral for the establishment of lichenology in the British Isles. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, science was neither a conventional nor widely accepted career path for women, but things were slowly changing. The Linnaean Society selected female fellows from 1904. The first few generations of women had graduated from universities, having been given increased access to higher education in the 1860s and 70s, and being awarded degrees in the more ‘modern’ institutions from 1878. Smith and Knowles were part of this changing social context. Smith was born in Liverpool in 1854 but brought up in Scotland; Knowles was born in Cullybackey, Co. Antrim, in 1864. Both were born to wealthy families that nurtured scientific thought. As a result of this, Knowles was sent to study botany in Dublin at the Royal College of Science. Smith also studied at the Royal College of Science, confusingly a different college sharing the same name but based in South Kensington. 

In their respective cities, both women made good connections, and were regular faces in local naturalist clubs. They became herbarium assistants at National Museums – Knowles in the Science and Art Museum in Dublin and Smith in the British Museum (Natural History Museum). 

In 1909 these eerily similar life-paths collided when Robert Lloyd Praeger, Ireland’s most famous naturalist, and a great friend of Knowles’, devised the Clare Island Survey. This was a project spanning from 1909 to 1911 that attempted to survey the biodiversity, archaeology and folk traditions of Clare Island (Co. Mayo) – one of the most westerly locations in the British Isles. 

Approaching Granuaile’s Castle, Clew Bay, Clare Island

Funded by the Royal Society, the Royal Irish Academy, the Dublin Society, and the British Association for Advancement of Science, the Clare Island Survey involved 200 participants surveying 67 different areas. Women were involved, but with limited visibility. Smith was one of the most visible female participants, writing the report for lichen. Knowles was slightly less visible, as her field assistant. 

Knowles was a botanist, and at the start of the survey, we see that Knowles was still getting to grips with the complexities of lichenology. She repeatedly collects the same quite common specimens (there’s a lovely example of the maritime sunburst lichen, Xanthoria parietina). She learns fast, and soon is collecting rare and new species. A specimen of Lecidea gonophilia (now Lecidella stigmatea) collected in 1910 is one of several examples of herbarium sheets marked with the names of both women. This suggests that they're actively collecting together, as scientific collaborators, as comrades. In her obituary for Knowles, who died unexpectedly from pneumonia in 1933, Smith uses the word ‘comrade’ to describe her friend: ‘Her gay humour and loyal comradeship will not easily be forgotten for those who were privileged enough to know her.’² This word ‘comrade’ encapsulates the combination of science and sociability that was so important to women in the professional sphere in this period.

These ‘comrades’ would have travelled to Clare Island in an open fishing boat with about 4 to 12 other botanists. On foot, they would have scoured a landscape that Smith describes as ‘rocky, a storm beaten coast’ of ‘rock and moorland’ with uncultivated ‘undisturbed tracks’ carrying all their equipment with them.³ This was physically demanding and they were unassisted. In these conditions Smith and Knowles (alongside William West) collected about 280 species, with 4 subspecies on and around Clare Island. 34 of these are entirely new to Ireland. The lichen survey confirmed that Ireland’s Coast provides a unique environment for lichens. Clare Island’s westerly position facing the Atlantic reaps the benefit of an hyper-oceanic climate which provides mild winters, summers and high humidity. There are also a variety of substrates for lichen to grow on, with the island itself having plenty of undisturbed rocks.⁴

The Lichen part of the Clare Island Survey provided a benchmark for our understanding of lichens on Co.Mayo’s coast, and was so comprehensive that it was replicated in the 1990s to track species changes. This is one of many major contributions these women made to British and Irish lichenology. Over her lifetime, Knowles added over 100 lichen species to the Irish list and determined the growth of shoreline lichens in distinct tidal zones.⁵ Smith’s career marks the beginning of lichenology as a discipline, for which she was a world-renowned expert. Her Lichens (1921) remains an important handbook on the group. 

I want to credit Dr Matthew Jebb and Dr Christina Campbell at the National Botanic Gardens Ireland for the resources, reading suggestions and archival images they sent me while conducting my research on Matilda Knowles and The Clare Island Survey. 

References 

¹ Distinctions that were so minor that the two lichens have since been understood as the same species.

² Smith, ‘Recent Lichen Literature’ Transactions of the British Mycological Society vol. 18, issue 2. November 1933, p.126.

³ Smith, A.L. ‘14: Lichenes’ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature, vol. 31, A Biological Survey of Clare Island in the County of Mayo, Ireland and of the Adjoining District (Sections 1-3) (1911 - 1915), pp. 14.1-14.14.

⁴ Whelan, P. Lichens of Ireland and Great Britain, Holm Oak Press, National Botanic Gardens, Dublin, Dublin, 2024, p.iii

⁵ Knowles, M.C. ‘The Maritime and Marine Lichens of Howth’ The Scientific Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society, vol. XIV (N.S.), no.6, Royal Dublin Society, August 1913. 

Knowles, M.C. ‘The Lichens of Ireland’ Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section B: Biological, Geological, and Chemical Science, 1928/1929, Vol. 38, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1928/1929, pp. 179-434.