One of the two plants named for esteemed Australian botanist and UNE alumna Professor Betsy Jackes is “an insignificant wattle” found only around Townsville, in north Queensland. The other is a fossilised grape seed dating back to the Paleogene period (33.9 million-23 million years ago).
“Make of that what you will,” says Townsville-based Betsy, who is something of a rarity herself. The scientist described as a “botanical icon” and “female titan of Queensland’s natural history” became the first woman dean of science at James Cook University (JCU) in 1993 and, earlier this year, the first woman recipient of a JCU Honorary Doctor of Science.
“It doesn’t do the ego any harm,” says Betsy. “I wasn’t aiming for these things particularly; it just happened. And I have never, to my knowledge, been discriminated against as a woman.”
The Honorary Doctor of Science recognised Betsy’s outstanding contribution to JCU over 50 years, well beyond her formal retirement in 2000. When “all that half the people my age do is play cards”, 87-year-old Betsy continues to attend her adjunct office regularly, writing and reviewing scientific papers and occasionally supervising students. She also teaches one extremely popular online subject at JCU – on Australian land plants. Then there’s the two botany subjects Betsy teaches at the University of the Third Age and the expertise she lends to members of Native Plants Queensland.
And it all began at UNE, when a “naïve country girl” discovered a love for botany.
“From the age of three I was always asking why,” Betsy says. “I grew up on a property near Bingara where wheat breeders had trial plots and I think I must have driven those geneticists mad asking questions. I was always looking for patterns and problems and relationships between things, so science was a natural choice at university.
Professor Gwenda Davis collecting samples near Warialda.
“I selected botany as a fill-in subject and just got plain interested in it. UNE was only a small university then (in 1953) and everyone was residential, so you knew everybody. The science people would all share morning and afternoon tea on the lawn at Booloominbah.
“It was at UNE that I was encouraged to think and adapt, especially by Professor Gwenda Davis (who largely established UNE’s Department of Botany) and Professor Noel Beadle (UNE’s Foundation Professor of Botany). They made us stop and look.”
Betsy Jackes outside Hut A.
Betsy began tutoring in botany at UNE while completing her Masters, then earned a Fulbright Scholarship to do her PhD at the University of Chicago. Returning to Armidale, she resumed tutoring before marrying and moving to the University of Queensland, but joined JCU just over a year later. She has been identifying and cataloguing the tropical plants of north Queensland ever since, progressing from JCU lecturer to head of the Tropical Plant Sciences Department and deputy head of the School of Tropical Biology.
“I just fell into these things,” says Betsy. “My career has just moved along, and fortunately I was married to someone who loved going bush and four-wheel-driving.”
Collaborating with others has been a joy of her work. “I enjoy the exchange of ideas,” Betsy says. “If you are working alone or stay in one place too long, you can get very set in your ways and how you think. But if you bring in people with other ideas from different disciplines or go on study leave, it sparks new ideas.
“Any plant community consists of the plants, but also the animals, the soil and topography. One person cannot possibly study all of that. You might be sitting around with students or on a field trip around a campfire, enjoying a few red wines – that’s when ideas are exchanged. I am a networker; I like to be involved and know what’s going on, to keep up with the latest developments.”
Today, Betsy is renowned internationally as a researcher, taxonomist and author. Her specialty is the plant systematics and ecology of tropical flora and many of Betsy’s publications (she has written more than 100 major papers) have broken new ground. “Her books were instrumental in developing a region-specific scaffold of fundamental plant knowledge, and have provided the foundation material for workshops, teaching subjects, and field trips, bringing the north’s botany alive,” said the JCU citation for her Doctor of Science.
The Australian biodiversity data website Atlas of Living Australia contains more than 3800 records of plants Betsy has collected. She has, so far, described 43 plant species and three subspecies new to science, and her specimens are highly sought by herbariums around the country.
While she now forgoes a tent in favour of a comfortable motel room during annual or bi-annual field trips with Native Plants Queensland, Betsy says her passion for Australian plants is undiminished.
“I still like being out bush and head out to the White Mountains area around Hughenden quite a lot,” she says. “I am a great believer in field work. Any research in the natural sciences should involve field work, so I have seen a fair amount of tropical Australia particularly.”
Engaging students and the community continues to motivate this doyen of botany.
“Whatever I have done, I have tried to teach people to think,” Betsy says. “There is always a lot to learn; much more than I will ever achieve.”
