South African botanical artist from the Transvaal. Cythna Letty was born in Standerton, but because her father frequently changed jobs and moved the family in pursuit of work she spent her childhood and adolescence in various towns across the Transvaal highveld. When her father, who fought in France during the First World War, chose not to return after Armistice, her abandoned mother supported the family by painting illustrated genealogies. Cythna Letty found work teaching at a farm school near Pretoria, and afterwards studied nursing and assisted in her brother-in-law's surgery in Cape Town. She shared her mother's talent for painting and in 1925 was employed as an artist at the Veterinary Division, Ondersterpoort, later transferring to the Division of Plant Industry in Pretoria under Dr Pole Evans. Although she resigned in 1938 to get married, she returned seven years later and remained with the Division of Botany until her official retirement in 1966.
As resident botanical artist, she collected about 500 numbers from KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Province, including specimens from Kruger National Park, and contributed more than 700 illustrations to Flowering Plants of South Africa. She published an illustrated book in 1962 on the wildflowers of Transvaal, and worked for many years on a revision of Zantedeschia, which was published in Bothalia in 1973. She also designed the floral motifs on the new South African coins when decimal currency was introduced. Other highlights of her career were an exhibition of her paintings in 1966 at the Hunt Library, Philadelphia, and a silver medal in 1970 from the Royal Horticultural Society. In her eighties she published a collection of poetry entitled Children of the Hours. She is commemorated by Crassula lettyae E. Phillips and Aloe lettyae Reynolds. Also named after her are the Cythna Letty Gold Medal, awarded by the Botanical Society of South Africa for contributions to botanical illustration in South Africa, and the Cythna Letty Nature Reserve (near Barberton, Mpumalanga), where her ashes were scattered.
