Lilian Suzette Gibbs was a British botanist who worked for the British Museum in London and an authority on mountain ecosystems.
Education
She studied initially at Swanley Horticultural College in Kent, UK and then specialised in botany at the Royal College of Science in London, studying under J. B. Farmer. Her postgraduate research was into seeds of the Alsinoidae. While a student, she collected plants from the European Alps and developed her identification skills with help from the Botanical Department at the Natural History Museum.
Career
Gibbs was employed by the Natural History section of the British Museum in London for her entire career but also collaborated with the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens,Kew and undertook histological and plant development work at the Royal College of Science. Expeditions between 1905 and 1915 to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Iceland, Indonesia, Malaysia, South America, the US and Zimbabwe allowed her to see plant life worldwide, and mountain plants were her particular interest. In 1905 she was part of a British Association visit to Rhodesia and collected plant material. She visited Fiji in 1907 and explored the flora on the northern slopes of the Mount Victoria range, and then studied the bryophyteflora of New Zealand on her way home, identifying four new species of liverwort in the Waitākere Ranges. She also reported on the destruction of the New Zealand forests to permit grazing on her return to the UK in the Gardener's Chronicle in 1908 and 1909. She was the first woman and the first botanist to ascend Mount Kinabalu in February 1910 while leading an expedition for three months that recorded 15 new plant species. One outcome of this expedition was to show the importance of New Guinea as a centre for subsequent radiation of plants to south and east. In 1912 she collected in Iceland. 1913 found her in the Arfak Mountains, Dutch New Guinea and she continued to the Bellenden-Ker Range in Queensland, Australia in 1914 and then returned to London from Tasmania in 1915. Her final visit was to South America. Her travels were limited after 1921 due to ill-health and she died in 1925 at Santa Cruz, on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Gibbs collected many plants new to science. Her specimens are in the collections at the British Museum. Others have named genera and species in her honour. These include Racemobambos gibbsiae Holttum or Miss Gibbs' Bamboo, the genus Gibbsia Rendle and the moss species Calobryum gibbsiae Steph. and Lepidozia gibbsiana Steph. Gibbs had the personality and ability to organise and carry out her expeditions successfully but was also remembered for her skill as a hostess at afternoon tea-parties.
