Jeanne Borle

Jeanne M. Borle (occasionally known as Johanna Louise Borle, Lydia Borle, or by the honorific Kokwana; she married the missionary physician Dr. James Borle. Along with other Swiss missionaries that were heading to South Africa at the time, the Borles travelled to Elim, Western Cape to assist in the running of a hospital there.

It is around this time, after the death of her husband, and on the eastern coast of southern Africa, that Borle appears to have developed an interest in plant collecting. She wrote to the National Herbarium of Pretoria in April 1919, from Maputo, requesting a pamphlet with information about collecting and drying flowers, and soon was sending many specimens that she had collected to the Pretoria herbarium. She was the first collector to send specimens from western Zambia to the Pretoria herbarium. The plants that she collected were then distributed from Pretoria to other herbaria, including Meise, Coimbra, The New York Botanical Garden, Uppsala, University of Vienna

Borle returned to the Elim mission in the 1950s, where she continued to work until the age of 97. She died aged 99, in Elim.

Borle also collected the type specimens of Hymenocardia capensis, Barleria lateralis, and Acacia chariessa.