Charlotte Grace O’Brien (1845-1909), her botanical interests and achievements

Charlotte Grace O’Brien, whose father William Smith O’Brien was the parliamentarian and revolutionary, was best known for her campaigning work to improve conditions for emigrants from Ireland to America in the first half of the 1880s. Apart from her political writings, her poems, essays and a novel were also published. A Memoir of her life was written in the year she died (1909), but little was known about her considerable contribution to Irish botany, including many of her plant records accepted by Robert Lloyd Praeger. She always had a great love and knowledge of the countryside and its wildlife. For several years towards the end of her life, she collaborated with professional botanist Matilda Knowles doing fieldwork in the north-west of Co. Limerick, collecting numerous plant specimens (now in the National Herbarium at the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin) and resulting in their publication ‘The Flora of the Barony of Shanid’ in 1907. Miss O’Brien’s botanical achievements and legacy are discussed along with relevant work, mainly by relatives.