Soejatmi Soenarko was born in Nganjuk, Indonesia in 1939.
Education
Dransfield got her first degree in Plant Taxonomy from the Academy of Agriculture, Ciawi,
Bogor
Bogor ( su, , nl, Buitenzorg) is a city in the West Java province, Indonesia. Located around south of the national capital of Jakarta, Bogor is the 6th largest city in the Jakarta metropolitan area and the 14th overall nationwide.University of Reading in the UK, her thesis entitled Revision of ''
Cymbopogon
''Cymbopogon'', also known as lemongrass, barbed wire grass, silky heads, Cochin grass, Malabar grass, oily heads, citronella grass or fever grass, is a genus of Asian, African, Australian, and tropical island plants in the grass family.
Some ...
Dransfield began her career as a staff member of Herbarium Bogoriense, Bogor in Indonesia. After completing her
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, she went back to working at Bogor and continued working on bamboos. She moved to the UK in 1978 to continue her research on bamboo taxonomy including the generic delimitation of the
Old World
The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by the ...
tropical bamboos. She writes on the account of bamboos from Malaysia, Thailand and Madagascar.
Her appointment as an honorary research fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden was a recognition of her work on the bamboos. Together with her husband John Dransfield, she traveled to South East Asia and Madagascar. They presented their research on bamboos at the Plant Resources of South East Asia meeting in
Jakarta
Jakarta (; , bew, Jakarte), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta ( id, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta) is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta ...
.
Dransfield's efforts resulted in the identification and description of forty two erect bamboo species. In 1993 and 1994, Dransfield collected specimens of ''
Schizostachyum
''Schizostachyum'' is a tall or shrub-like tropical genus of bamboo. They are natives mostly of tropical Asia and Papuasia, with a few species in Madagascar and on certain islands in the Pacific. A few have become naturalized in other tropical ...
'' and '' Dinochloa'' from Luzon in Philippines which she used to study, revise and publish articles. This was a three-year project on bamboos “Field guide for the identification of erect bamboos grown in the Philippines and helped collect materials for taxonomy and updated nomenclature.
At the Kew Herbarium, her primary research is on the paleotropical bamboos. Along with a team of other botanists, Dransfield has worked to identify sixty species of bamboos by carefully studying the bamboo trunks, leaves, and shoots through a software program written by French professor Regine Vignes Lebbe. The bamboo genus ''
Soejatmia
''Soejatmia'' is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Poaceae. It just contains one species, ''Soejatmia ridleyi'' (Gamble) K.M.Wong
Its native range is from the peninsula of Thailand to Malaya.
The genus name of ''Soe ...
'' from Malaya and Thailand, has been named after her.
She married Dr John Dransfield in Malaysia (1977).
Selected publications
* A New Species and a New Combination of ''Cyrtochloa''
*''Sirochloa'', a New Bamboo Genus from Madagascar (Poaceae-Bambusoideae)
*''Cyrtochloa'', a New Genus of Bamboo (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from the Philippines
*''Valiha'' and ''Cathariostachys'', Two New Bamboo Genera (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from Madagascar
*Notes on ''Bambusa diffusa'' (Gramineae-Bambusoideae) from Luzon, Philippines
Books
* The Bamboos of Sabah
*Plant Resources of South-East Asia: Bamboos. no 7