Hillegonda (Hiltje) Maas-van de Kamer (born 9 December 1941) is a botanist at the Institute of Systematic Botany at

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

. She is the wife of Professor Paul Maas and together they have published many papers. She is a specialist in the flora of the

neotropics The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

. She is the daughter of Catharina Braak and Jan Hendrik van de Kamer, who was a pharmacist and chemist at the TNO. She studied between 1962 and 1981 at

. Together, the Maas partnership have identified and named about two hundred fifty plants from the

Burmanniaceae Burmanniaceae is a family of flowering plants, consisting of 99 species of herbaceous plants in eight genera. Description These plants are annual or perennial herbs, with generally unbranched stems, some lacking leaves. Some members of this fam ...

, the Costus Family (

Costaceae Costaceae, known as the ''Costus'' family or spiral gingers, is a family of pantropical monocots. It belongs to the order Zingiberales, which contains horticulturally and economically important plants such as the banana (Musaceae), bird-of-p ...

), the Gentian Family (

Gentianaceae Gentianaceae is a family of flowering plants of 103 genera and about 1600 species. Etymology The family takes its name from the genus '' Gentiana'', named after the Illyrian king Gentius. Distribution Distribution is cosmopolitan. Characteri ...

), the Bloodwort Family ( Haemodoraceae), the Banana Family ( Musaceae), the

Olacaceae Olacaceae is a family (biology), family of flowering plants in the order Santalales. They are woody plants, native throughout the tropical regions of the world. , the Circumscription (taxonomy), circumscription of the family varies; some sources ...

, the

Triuridaceae Triuridaceae are a family of tropical and subtropical flowering plants, including nine genera with a total of approximately 55 known species. All members lack chlorophyll and are mycoheterotrophic (obtain food by digesting intracellular fungi, o ...

, and the Ginger Family (

Zingiberaceae Zingiberaceae () or the ginger family is a family of flowering plants made up of about 50 genera with a total of about 1600 known species of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes distributed throughout tropical Af ...

). The

Annonaceae The Annonaceae are a family of flowering plants consisting of trees, shrubs, or rarely lianas commonly known as the custard apple family or soursop family. With 108 accepted genera and about 2400 known species, it is the largest family in the Ma ...

and

saprotrophic Saprotrophic nutrition or lysotrophic nutrition is a process of chemoheterotrophic extracellular digestion involved in the processing of decayed (dead or waste) organic matter. It occurs in saprotrophs, and is most often associated with fungi ( ...

plants from the neotropics, such as the

, are two major areas of research. Maas has also worked with the genus '' Canna'' (Cannaceae) and has published floristic treatments of this group for Ecuador (Maas & Maas 1988), and in 2008 released a complete revision of the genus, ''The Cannaceae of the World''.The Cannaceae of the World, H. Maas-van de Kamer & P.J.M. Maas

References

External links

Page of Hiltje and Paul Maas

Proposal to conserve the name Canna tuerckheimii
1941 births Living people 20th-century Dutch botanists 21st-century Dutch botanists Cannaceae Utrecht University alumni Scientists from Utrecht (city) {{netherlands-botanist-stub