American philanthropist and collector of natural history specimens. Born into a wealthy family, throughout her life Annie Montague Alexander funded her own scientific trips on which she hunted and photographed animals and collected plants. She was always accompanied by her lifelong friend, Louise Kellogg, a school teacher. Their herbarium specimens, numbering 17,851 sheets, are attributed to both of them.

Annie Alexander was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, where her father pioneered the growing of sugar cane. She undertook her first plant collecting in the mountains of California while on a camping trip in 1899 and later attended palaeontology lectures at the University of California, whetting her appetite for natural history and exploration. In order to learn the practical side of collecting she financed the fieldwork of the lecturer, John C. Merriam, and accompanied him on trips. Her money also helped to build the university's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology (established 1908), which would come to hold many specimens she collected. These included extinct reptiles from Nevada, big cats and other game from a hunting trip to Africa, and Alaskan bear skins.

In about 1938, Alexander and Kellogg began to devote themselves to plant collecting, making their last trip in 1947 when Alexander was 80 years old. She celebrated her 81st birthday camped among the oaks and pines in remote Sierra de la Lagune, Baja California, with Kellogg and Annetta Carter, principal herbarium botanist of the University of California.

Sources:
O. Reifschneider, 1964, Biographies of Nevada Botanists: 151.