Olive Mary Hilliard is a noted South African botanist and taxonomist. Hilliard authored 372 land plantspecies names, the fifth-highest number of such names authored by any female scientist. Hilliard attended Natal University in the years 1943-47 where she obtained an MSc and later a PhD. She worked at the National Herbarium in Pretoria in 1947-48 and was a lecturer in botany at Natal University from 1954 to 1962. In 1963 she became curator of the herbarium at Natal University and a research fellow. Her special fields of interest were the flora of Natal and the taxonomy of Streptocarpus, Compositae and Scrophulariaceae. In 1964 she formed a professional and personal collaboration with Brian Laurence Burtt who played a large part in the revitalising of a moribund Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Their collaboration resulted in numerous papers and three books, Streptocarpus: an African Plant Study, The Botany of the Southern Natal Drakensberg, and Dierama: The Hairbells of Africa. Her collected specimens, mostly from the Natal Drakensberg and Malawi, number some 8 000. She is commemorated in Plectranthus hilliardiae Codd, Schizoglossum hilliardiae Kupicha, Cymbopappus hilliardiae B.Nord., Agalmyla hilliardiae D.J.Middleton & S.M.Scott and Helichrysum hilliardiae Wild.
Works
Hilliard, OM, BL Burtt 1971. Streptocarpus: an African Plant Study
Hilliard, OM. 1983. Flora of Southern Africa Series. Ed. Balogh Scientific Books. 325 pp.
Hilliard, OM, BL Burtt 1985. A Revision of Geranium in Africa south of the Limpopo. ]
Hilliard, OM. 1987. The Botany of the Southern Natal Drakensberg Ed. National Botanic Gardens. 253 pp.
Hilliard, OM, BL Burtt 1991. Dierama: The Hairbells of Africa. Ed. Timber Press, Inc. 152 pp.
Hilliard, OM. 1995. The Manuleae: A Tribe of Scrophulariaceae. Ed. Edinburgh University Press. 600 pp.
Hilliard, OM, LS Davis. 1997. Trees & Shrubs of Natal . Ed. Univ. of Kwazulu Natal Press; 2ª ed. 48 pp.
Hilliard, OM. 1997. Flowers of the Natal Drakensberg: The Lily, Iris And Orchid Family And Their Allies Ed. Univ. of Kwazulu Natal Press. 85 pp.
