Georgiana Elisabeth Kilderbee

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Miss Georgiana Elisabeth Kilderbee (1798-1868)

Biography

Born into a Suffolk family Miss Kilderbee moved to West Cowes, on the Isle of Wight in or before 1838 with her sister and her father, a retired vicar. After the death of her father in 1849 Miss Kilderbee moved back to Hampshire, near Gosport where she remained until her death at the age of seventy. She is mentioned as providing many of the records in the Flora Vectensis of W.A.Bromfield published in 1856. She appears to have been a very good botanist and discovered new sites with many rarities, like Cockleton Bog near Northwood, which sadly is now lost. Her cousin Emma Delme-Radcliffe (1811? - 1880) visited her on the Island and they looked at Miss Kilderbee's sites together. Miss Kilderbee also visited her cousin in mainland Hampshire and contributed many of the records to the Flora Hantoniensis. Fortunately Emma Delme-Radcliffe's herbarium survives, though that of GEK, mentioned by Bromfield, has been lost and we consequently have specimens which give provenance to her records at one remove. There are 156 specimens from GEK's sites on the Isle of Wight in the Delme-Radcliffe herbarium which is now in the Special Collections at Southampton University Library.

information included from the herbariaunited database

references and external links

• Kent DH & Allen DE. 1984. British and Irish Herbaria. London.