Betty Eleanor Gosset Molesworth Allen (née Molesworth, 21 July 1913 – 11 October 2002) was a New Zealand botanist. She researched and published extensively on Southeast Asian ferns, and in her retirement she discovered a fern in southern Spain that had previously been thought to be an exclusively tropical species.
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Early life
Molesworth Allen was born on 21 July 1913 in Ōpōtiki, a small town in the North Island of New Zealand. Her father, Arthur Ernest Parnell Molesworth, a farmer, was the Paris-born younger son of a Cornwall rector, the 8th Viscount Molesworth. Her mother, born Nellie Maud Banks, was a friend of the suffragist Pankhurst family.
Molesworth Allen suffered tuberculosis, polio and cancer as a child and spent most of her childhood in hospitals and unable to attend schools. However, both her parents were passionate about nature and wildlife, particularly birds, and as a result she grew up with a love of flora and fauna.