Georgiana Molloy – Botanical Collector

Extracted from The Secrets of Great Botanists: And What They Teach Us About Gardening by Matthew Biggs, published by Exisle Publishing, RRP: $39.99.

Georgiana Molloy
date 1 8 0 5 – 1 8 4 3
origin E N G L A N D
major achievement B O TA N I C A L  C O L L E C T O R

Georgiana Molloy is remembered as one of the first botanists in the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. As a retreat from the drudgery of her arduous daily life as an early settler, she spent her time gardening and collecting botanical specimens in an area scientists now consider to be one of 25 biodiversity hotspots in the world. What began as a hobby ended up as a work of great scientific value, and her collections were regarded as the finest of their da y to arrive in Britain.

Georgiana’s early childhood was idyllic. She lived in Crosby Lodge near Carlisle, England, in a country house with a large kitchen garden, surrounded by open countryside, where she became passionate about gardening and pressing wild flowers. Then, aged 14, disaster struck. Her father died after falling from a horse, leaving a widow and five children with considerable debts. When the family relocated to ‘horrid Rugby’ in Warwickshire, Georgiana broke with the strict traditions of the time, leaving home without the prospect of marriage or employment, and going to stay with friends at Keppoch House in Dunbartonshire. She remained there for 18 months, seeking solace among plants.

While in Scotland, a long-standing friend, the career soldier Captain John Molloy, exchanged his post with another officer, went onto half-pay, was listed as unattached from his regiment, and decided to join the Warrior, sailing for southwest Australia. The Swan River Colony (now the city of Perth) was its destination – the first non-convict colony in Australia. Molloy proposed to Georgiana in 1829 and, several months later, they set off on the demanding five-month voyage. Packed in her luggage were plants, seeds and a collection of pressed flowers she had accumulated since 1821.

A Passion For Collecting

Life as a pioneer was punishing. At the time, the colony was a collection of tents, crowded huts and livestock, so John and Georgiana (who struggled with the heat, fleas, flies and dysentery) moved 320km (200 miles) south along the coast to

Augusta. This was, however, the beginning of further hardship and tragedy. Georgiana’s first daughter, born in a tent on the beach soon after landing in Augusta, died a few days later; her only son drowned in a well, aged one-and-ahalf, and the colony almost starved to death when supplies failed to arrive. In between, Georgiana endured hours of loneliness while her husband worked away from home.

Yet again Georgiana sought comfort among plants, creating a garden with English flowers and seeds from the Cape, but she soon found greater joy in the native wild flowers that bloomed profusely in spring (such as the southwest Australian Kennedia carinata, pictured on p98). At first, she pressed and mounted them, sending them to family and friends in her letters. However, her life changed dramatically in 1838 when Lady Stirling, wife of the Governor of Western Australia, suggested to her cousin, Captain James Mangles, that he ask her to send plant material to him – he was particularly interested in seeds.

Georgiana then spent the last six years of her life pressing plants, describing them and collecting seeds; sending seeds and plants to London became her passion. She even persuaded others to collect material for her: her husband, daughters, farm workers – even soldiers walking between the towns of Vasse and Augusta – brought her specimens. But it was Georgiana who dried and labelled them all. Her pressed specimens were mounted with meticulous care, and her plant descriptions were known for their great detail – habitat, flowering time, soil and amount of moisture required. Georgiana waited patiently for seeds to ripen, and her samples were renowned for their freshness and careful packing. Each plant was mounted in a book with a corresponding number on the seed packet, and each package contained a detailed explanatory letter. As she wrote on one occasion: ‘I have minutely examined every seed and know they are sound and fresh as they have all been gathered in the past five weeks during December and January.’ A parcel sent in 1841 contained 100 different species.

In England, James Mangles dispersed the pressed specimens and seeds he received to 15 of the greatest scientists and gardeners of the day – including Joseph Paxton at Chatsworth House, and George Loddiges, whose nursery was famous for its hot-house orchids. In the words of Paxton, Georgiana’s collection was ‘collectively, the best and contains more good things than I have before received from that interesting part of the world’; he described her ‘important collection of seeds’ as ‘far superior to any we have received at Chatsworth’.

Recognition at Last

The botanist John Lindley (see pp86–91), who was fascinated by Australian flora particularly its orchids), was very impressed by Georgiana’s work. In his appendix to the first 23 volumes of Edwards’s Botanical Register, which included a sketch of the vegetation of the Swan River colony, he wrote glowingly of the lady ‘enthusiastically attached to the Botany of this remote region’. To Mangles he wrote: ‘… Mrs. Molloy is really the most charming personage in all South Australia and you the most fortunate man to have such a correspondent. That many of her plants are beautiful you can see for yourself & I am delighted to add that many of the best are quite new. I have marked many with a X.’ Yet despite declaring that Georgiana’s ‘zeal in the pursuit of Botany has made us acquainted with many of the plants of that little known part of the world’, her name was omitted from Lindley’s list of acknowledgements. Georgiana and Captain Mangles’s shared passion for plants, however, led to a mutually rewarding correspondence. In a letter of 1 February 1840, she wrote: ‘Our Acquaintance is both singular and tantalizing, and somewhat melancholy to me, my dear Sir, to reflect on. We shall never meet in this life. We may mutually smooth and cheer the rugged path of the World’s Existence, even in its brightest condition, by strewing flowers in our Way, but we never can converse with each other, and I am sincere when I say, I never met with anyone who so perfectly called forth and could sympathize with me in my prevailing passion for Flowers.’ Georgiana died in childbirth in 1843 aged just 37, having compiled around 1,000 collections. Late in her life she wrote to Mangles, ‘I have sent you everything worth sending’. This talented botanist-gardener is now commemorated by the beautiful, pink-flowered shrub Boronia molloyae (tall boronia).

Georgiana Molloy: Inspiration for Gardeners

✣ A ‘British’ garden could not survive the long, dry summers and poor soil of southwest Australia, so Georgiana developed her own ideas and style, combining plants – particularly natives – with plants from other parts of the world. The results were the talk of the colony. Assess the conditions, then adapt to achieve success.

✣ Georgiana found ways of adapting, despite the limitations of what was available. When fungus appeared in some seeds, she rinsed them in salt water, using its antifungal properties; as lime was unavailable, she used wood ash, with an alkaline pH instead. Be flexible, resourceful and unafraid to experiment; sometimes this is the only way to create a garden.

✣ At the start, Georgiana didn’t really know how to collect, mount or pack herbarium specimens. Lacking a plant press, she dried plant material between sheets of paper and weighted it down. Until Mangles sent her absorbent paper, everything she used would have been a great sacrifice. Bernice Barry, an authority on Georgiana, suggests that she probably used blotting paper, as writing letters and keeping a journal would have been a daily essential for her husband. Georgiana owned few books so it is likely she used rocks as weights. If you want to try pressing flowers, do so at their peak, once the dew has evaporated from the flowers. If you cannot press them immediately, store specimens in a ziplock bag, in the fridge.

✣ Georgiana noted where she had found plants, even marking the plants themselves, then returned later for the seeds. She made bags to keep seeds separate and discarded any that had been entered by even the tiniest insects. She also experimented with ways to prevent infestation – sprinkling seeds with pepper or wrapping them in ‘tanner’s bark’, and later sending living plants in a ‘Wardian case’. When collecting seeds at home, cut the capsules just before they ripen and pop them into a paper bag. Put this in a warm, dry place and the shed seed will be easy to collect later.