Muelleria 36: 22–50 Published online in advance of the print edition, 16 March 2018. A passion for plants: The botanical contribution of collector P.J. Murphy Susan Kruss Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History, Federation University, Ballarat, Victoria. email:
[email protected] Abstract Introduction ‘Collector: Murphy, P.J.’ listed on the The contribution of women to Australian botany has not yet been fully online Australasian Virtual Herbarium, explored. Pat Murphy’s contribution was significant both in her local area collected plant specimens from and through the 1138 specimens she collected that are now held at the the early 1980s to 2006. Fifteen specimens were sent to the National National Herbarium, Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria (MEL). Pat’s story Herbarium of Victoria during her extends the history of collectors and collecting beyond the colonial era lifetime, and the remaining collection into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a period as yet only lightly of 1123 specimens was donated to touched on in the history of botany. One advantage of examining a more the Herbarium in 2007. Who was P.J. recent collector is the availability of people who knew Pat and whose Murphy, why did she collect, and what can be discovered by examining memories of her can be accessed through oral history interviews. The Field her collection of specimens? Much Naturalists’ Club of Ballarat (FNCB) provided the context for Pat’s learning of the information in this article is about botany and her involvement in collecting (Fig. 1a,b). I was able to derived from the minutes of the Field Naturalists’ Club of Ballarat (FNCB) and from interviews with her husband, Bill Murphy, and members of FNCB.