Betsy Rivers Jackes


Betsy Rivers Jackes is an Australian botanist, researcher, taxonomist and author. Her research interests are the plants in the families Myrsinaceae and Vitaceae.

Education

Jackes completed her BSc in 1957, followed by her MSc in 1959, at the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales. She won a Fulbright Scholarship to study in the United States and took up a position as a research scholar at the University of Chicago, where she earned her PhD in 1961.

Career

Jackes initially began work as a tutor in botany at UNE in 1957, before taking on the same role at the University of Queensland in 1963. From 1973 through to 2018 she was a lecturer at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, where she headed the Tropical Plant Sciences Department, and was deputy head of the School of Tropical Biology. She is the author of many papers, articles, and environmental consultancy reports, and has published a number of books.
On Thursday, 24 March 2021, Jackes was presented one of the highest JCU awards, a Doctor of Science honoris causa, the sixth awardee for that degree at the university. This was for her sustained contributions to discovering and cataloguing tropical flora in northern Queensland, continued work with plant systematics and the ecology of the tropical flora.
Jackes was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2023 Australia Day Honours.
The standard author abbreviation Jackes is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name. Prior to her marriage, the author abbreviation B.R.Paterson was used.

Legacy

, the International Plant Names Index list 43 species of plants that were authored by her. The following is a list of those with articles on this wiki:Clematicissus opacaBackhousia tetrapteraDendrocnide cordifoliaMyrsine howittianaMyrsine richmondensis
Plants named in honour of Jackes include:
  • Betsy's wattle, a north Queensland floral native with a limited range west and north of Townsville; and
  • the fossilised Cissocarpus jackesiae, a species of grape in the family Vitaceae native to Australia. The genus Cissocarpus was formed with the grouping of seeds from the Oligocene silcretes.

Selected publications

Research papers

For a more comprehensive list, see
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Books

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Articles

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