Rebecca Merritt Smith Leonard Austin

Rebecca Merritt Smith Leonard Austin (1832–1919) collected and sold native plants of California and was an amateur naturalist. Lomatium austinae is named in her honor. She studied the chemistry, natural history of, and insects captured by the carnivorous pitcher plant Darlingtonia californica, and sold collected specimens to botanists and collectors. She carried out regular correspondence with botanist J. G. Lemmon and others. Her experiments and correspondences have been published or cited by Asa Gray, J.G. Lemmon, William Canby, Frank Morton Jones, and prominent botanists of the time.