Wege, Juliet Ann   (1971 - )

Born in Perth, Western Australia, 7 July 1971;

Juliet graduated in 1992 and gained a PhD at The University of Western Australia in 1999 with a thesis titled "Morphological and anatomical variation within Stylidium (Stylidiaceae): a systematic perspective".

She spent a year at Kew in 2000-2001 courtesy of some obscure postdoctoral research funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

She was without permanent employment when nominated for an ABLO term in 2005, having just come to the end of a three-year ABRS research grant on Stylidium taxonomy. Supplementary grants received from the then Department of Conservation and Land Management, the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, Kew and ABRS made the ABLO year possible.

En route to London she attended the International Botanical Congress in Vienna in July. She had a brief overlap in Kew with the previous ABLO, Alex George, then met up with her partner Ben Miller in Scotland for a short holiday before commencing her term as ABLO on 1 September 2005.

On her return to Perth in September 2006 after her ABLO term, WA's mineral resources boom was in full swing, placing additional pressures on efforts to document and conserve the state's biodiversity. In response to the discovery of a significant number of new plant taxa with distributions centred on areas of high mineral prospectivity, the newly created Department of Environment and Conservation had implemented a strategic taxonomy initiative aimed at formally describing new taxa of conservation significance (particularly those vulnerable to mining).

This provided an outstanding opportunity for Juliet to work with her Western Australan contemporaries Kelly Shepherd and Ryonen Butcher and researchers from across Australia, many of whom she had corresponded with during her year as ABLO at Kew.

Although initially for two years, during which they edited and produced Nytsia Volume 17, this project continued for another four years, resulting in the description of 154 new taxa from 23 families and 45 genera, 86% of which occur in areas subject to resource development or are otherwise of conservation concern.

After further Departmental name changes, Juliet was offered a permanent role at the Western Australian Herbarium in 2019. It was largely due to additional research grants from ABRS that she was able to continue to build an account of Stylidiaceae for Flora of Australia.

Source: Extracted from:
George, Alex (Ed), The Australian Botanical Liaison Officer scheme at Kew, 1937-2009, Four Gables Press, Perth, 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliet_Wege (2023)
Portrait Photo: 2016, M.Fagg

Collecting localities for 'Wege, J.A.' from AVH (2023)

Data from 2,2331 specimens