Lily May Perry facts for kids

Lily May Perry (1895-1992) was an amazing botanist from Canada and the United States. She worked at the Arnold Arboretum, which is a famous plant research center.

Lily May Perry is best known for two main things. First, she gathered lots of information about medicinal plants from East and Southeast Asia. These are plants used for medicine. Second, she helped create the Flora of New Guinea. A "flora" is like a big book listing all the plants found in a certain area.

She also holds a special record: she named more land plant species than almost any other female scientist! She officially named 414 different plant species.

Early Life and Education

Lily May Perry was born on January 5, 1895, in a place called Havelock, New Brunswick, Canada. She started her schooling in a small, one-room schoolhouse.

After her early schooling, she trained to be a teacher at the Provincial Normal School in Fredericton. She taught for a short time before going to Acadia University. There, she earned a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Biology with honors in 1921.

She taught again for three more years. Then, she was accepted into Radcliffe College. She studied there with professors like E. C. Jeffries and M. L. Fernald. She earned her Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in 1925.

In 1930, Lily May Perry received a special scholarship. This allowed her to study for her doctorate (Ph.D.) at Washington University in St. Louis. Her main project was to study different types of a plant called Verbena found in North America. She finished her Ph.D. in 1933. In 1938, she became a citizen of the United States.

Her Work as a Botanist

In the summer of 1929, Lily May Perry went on an exciting trip. She spent a month collecting plant samples on St. Paul Island (Nova Scotia) with another scientist, Dr. Muriel V. Roscoe. They later published a report in 1931 about all the plants they found on the island.

After earning her Ph.D., she worked at a few different places temporarily. She tried to find a permanent job in Canada but couldn't. So, M.L. Fernald, one of her former professors, hired her again. She became an assistant at the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University.

In 1936, another important scientist, E. D. Merrill, asked her to move to the Arnold Arboretum. Her new job was to help organize plant collections. These collections came from New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific Ocean.

Lily May Perry was supposed to retire in 1960. But she loved her work so much that she stayed at the Arnold Arboretum until 1964. She wanted to finish her big book, Medicinal Plants of East and Southeast Asia: Attributed Properties and Uses. This book is a huge collection of information about plants used in traditional medicine.

Awards and Recognition

Lily May Perry received an important honor in 1971. Her old university, Acadia University, gave her an Honorary Doctorate. This is a special degree given to people who have achieved great things.

Her work was so important that a new plant was named after her! In 1997, a botanist named T.G. Hartley discovered a new group of flowering plants in New Guinea. He named this group Perryodendron in her honor. The only known plant in this group is called Perryodendron parviflorum.

Selected Works

• Perry, Lily M. (1980). Medicinal Plants of East and Southeast Asia: Attributed Properties and Uses. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• A collection of her important papers and notes are kept in the Library of the Arnold Arboretum.