Mary Elizabeth Barkworth (born 1941 Marlborough UK) is a Canadian who has worked most of her life as a botanist. She has spent most of her working life as a faculty member at Utah State University. During that time, she worked primarily on grasses, particularly members of the Stipeae and Triticeae, but she also had primary responsibility for production of the two grass [=Poaceae, Gramineae] volumes (volumes 24 & 25) in the Flora of North America series. These two volumes served as the basis for three other resources: The Manual of Grasses for North America, Grasses of the Intermountain Region, and the Manual of Grasses on the web. This last was taken down for security concerns. Most of its resources, some updated, are available through OpenHerbarium.org (descriptions and illustrations) and Keybase. Barkworth retired from Utah State University in 2012. Since retiring, she has focused on two areas, expanding digitization of herbarium collections using OpenHerbarium.org and developing access to biodiversity education in Somaliland through the Somaliland Biodiversity Foundation.
Her name is usually abbreviated as «Barkworth» when citing a botanical name.
