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Title
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Britton, Elizabeth Gertrude Knight (1858-1934)
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birthday
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1858-01-09
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Birthplace
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New York City, NY
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Death Date
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1934-02-25
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Occupation
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Botanist, educator
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Biographical Text
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Elizabeth Knight was one of five daughters born to parents James and Sophie Anne. She spent most of her childhood on a farm and factory in Cuba, then attended a private New York school before going to Normal College. She graduated at 17, and then joined their staff as a teacher. She specialized in botany and reported upon plants in multiple different publications, often acting as a teacher and traveling across the country to collect specimens. Britton wrote over 300 papers, with about half of them regarding mosses specifically, and was consistently working to further the understandings of all plants. Her most famous accomplishment was the banning of people using wild American holly as a Christmas decoration; as an alternative, she suggested propagation, or growing, of the plant instead to save the wild holly. She also devoted many years of her life to the conservation of wildflowers, an act which spurred on fourteen articles discussing wild plants and how they needed to be protected. Britton's efforts led to the conservation of such in many different states. She additionally led boycott campaigns, headed a conservation committee, funded the New York Botanical Garden, and was able to help many collections of plants grow in various schools.
Elizabeth married Nathaniel Lord Britton, an assistant geologist at Columbia College, in August of 1885. She died at her home in The Bronx following an apoplectic stroke. Fifteen species of plant, one animal species, and the moss genus Bryobrittonia are all named for her.
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Contributor
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Zizelmann, Evelyn
