Maria Bandeira, an elusive Brazilian botanist

Abstract

Maria do Carmo Vaughan Bandeira (1902-1992) is a little-known Brazilian botanist who worked for about ten years at the Botanical Garden in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She made approximately 800 botanical collections, including mosses (her special interest) but also lichens, fungi and occasionally angiosperms. She studied at La Sorbonne in Paris, corresponded with leading botanists in different fields of botanical research in Europe and the USA, and represented the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden in many instances. At age 29 she abandoned a promising research career and entered a convent in Rio where she lived for 60 years as a cloistered nun.