Phoebe Lankester

Phoebe Lankester (also Phebe Lankester; 10 April 1825 – 9 April 1900) was a British botanist known for her popular science writing, particularly on wildflowers, parasitic plants, and ferns. Her writing incorporated both technical, high-level text and writing accessible to the lay reader.

She was born Phoebe Pope in Highbury to a former Manchester mill owner and his wife.^[1] She had one brother. In 1845, she married the naturalist Edwin Lankester, with whom she had eight children.^{[1] [2]} Her son Ray became a zoologist.

Lankester published under the name Mrs. Lankester. Her books combined scientific rigor with interesting information about traditional medicinal uses of plants.^[3] She also lectured on science and wrote a syndicated column on women's topics that ran in provincial newspapers.^[4]

Lankester wrote a new section on popular plant knowledge for the third (1884) edition of English Botany , an enormous and influential publication that had illustrations by James Sowerby and other members of the Sowerby family.^[5]

• A Plain and Easy Account of the British Ferns (1860)
• Wild Flowers Worth Notice (1879)
• Talks About Plants, Or, Early Lessons in Botany (1879)
• The National Thrift Reader (1880)
• British Ferns (1881)

• English botanists
• English botanical writers
• 1825 births
• 1900 deaths
• British women botanists
• 19th-century British botanists
• 19th-century British writers
• 19th-century British women scientists
• 19th-century British women writers
• People from Highbury
• Scientists from London
• Writers from the London Borough of Islington

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