Nightingale, Maggie E. (nee Sutton) ( - )

Maggie worked at the Australian National Herbarium or the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) from 1991 except for 2 periods amounting to about 3½ years, and was employed twice by CSIRO and twice by the Department of the Environment (the 2 partners in the Centre for Australian National Biodiversity Research) during this time.

She performed data entry, updating and validation on both the precursors of the current specimen data base, as well as the current combined one, and was registrar for over 11 years. Other duties at various times were assisting Mike Lazarides with the Flora of Australia project (on some Chloridoid grass genera) and working as a technician (specimen processing and in vitro propagation) for the Orchid Research Group, which included David Jones and Mark Clements at that time, for 7 years. As well as her duties as registrar, she was (at least nominally) the curator of Poaceae from 2005, but here she found she was not able to keep up with the volume of work required in that area.

It's also worth noting that Maggie had very strong links with the ANBG, particularly with assisting the Living Collections staff to wrangle the data that links herbarium vouchers to living plants and also with the Integrated Botanical Information System staff due to her role in data management.

Maggie was also the lead author for 26 genera of Poaceae in volume 44B of the Flora of Australia (describing as new Ectrosia ovata Night. and Zoysia macrantha subsp. walshii Night.) and did some contract editing with Australian Biologicial Resources Study (ABRS), where again her meticulous attention to detail improved the published treatments immensely.

On her retirement, Maggie Nightingale was farewelled on Wednesday 1 March 2017 with a morning tea at the Australian National Herbarium.

Source: Extracted from: Monro, A. (2017) Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 170 (March 2017)
Portrait Photo: Extracted from: XXXX

Specimen collection locations for 'Nightingale, M.E. + Sutton, M.E.' from AVH (1/5/2017)

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