She matriculated at the
Durban Girls' High School, leaving for
Edinburgh shortly after. Jacot Guillarmod was awarded an
MA in English and History at the
University of St Andrews, but inspired by
D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, switched interests and started an
MSc degree in
Botany and
Zoology at the same university. On her return to South Africa, she taught briefly in Durban and was then appointed plant pathologist in the
Division of Botany and Plant Pathology of the Department of Agriculture in
Pretoria. Her first papers dealt with the viral diseases of
tobacco and other crops. She spent the years between 1940 and 1957 in Basutoland. In 1956/7 she became Head of the Botany Department of the
Pius XII College in
Roma. Jacot Guillarmod founded the Roma Herbarium in 1956. In 1958 she and her family moved to
Grahamstown when she took up an appointment as lecturer in the Botany Department of
Rhodes University. Her links with Basutoland were not forgotten, and in 1967 she received a
DSc from the
University of St Andrews for her research on the flora of Basutoland. She is commemorated in
Merxmuellera guillarmodiae Conert,
Navicula jacotiae F.R. Schoeman,
Pinnularia guillarmodiae F.R. Schoeman and a number of other organisms. Volume 50, part 1 (1988) of The
Flowering Plants of Africa was dedicated to her. Her specimens number some 10 000 and are mainly from
Lesotho and the
Eastern Cape, housed at the following herbaria: PREM, PRE, RUH, GRA, MASE, K and MO. ==Personal notes==