Education
She enrolled at the Escola Secundária Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho in 1928 and graduated in 1941 in Biological Sciences from the University of Lisbon.
She enrolled at the Escola Secundária Maria Amália Vaz de Carvalho in 1928 and graduated in 1941 in Biological Sciences from the University of Lisbon.
She is denoted by the author transcript R.Fern. when citing a botanical name. They settled in Coimbra, after Abilio moved there in August 1941 to take up the position of Museum Director at the University of Coimbra. In November 1947 he was appointed Naturalist of that institution, and remained there for the rest of his career.
Rosette proceeded to reorganise and update the classification of herbarium material and published an index of seeds of the Botanical Garden.
Between 1944 and 1991, she attended 41 international congresses, held in Spain, France, United Kingdom, Sweden and Portugal, while between 1945 and 2000, she published some 250 papers, mainly in the field of plant systematics, but also in karyology, ethnobotany and the history of botany. From her considerable work in plant taxonomy, and numerous new combinations, she described more than fifty taxa new to science.
Rosette Batarda Fernandes is commemorated in several species, including Marsilea batardae Launer. Her contributions to Macaronesian flora were published mostly in the Bulletin of the Broterian Society and Broterian Iconographia Selecta Azoricae Florae.
Noteworthy studies published between 1993 and 1997, were the Flora Ibérica (Vols III, IV and V), which include taxonomic treatments of eight genera belonging to the Cruciferae, Crassulaceae, Cucurbitaceae and Malvaceae.
She contributed to Flora Europaea, particularly noteworthy papers published in Volumes II (1968), III (1972) and IV (1976), covering the systematic study of 11 genera belonging to the Boraginaceae, Compositae, Labiatae, Malvaceae and Scrophulariaceae. As for African flora, she published 80 papers in journals between 1954 and 2000 - some were Conspectus Florae Angolensis, Garcia de Orta, Flora Zambeziaca and Flora of Mozambique.