Elsa Nyholm was born on a farm in Nordanå in rural Scania, southernmost Sweden.
There, she developed her plant identification skills, specialising in bryology, and contacts with botanists around the world.
Although lacking a formal academic degree, she found support at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm and received Swedish Natural Science Research Council grants from 1954 to 1964 to undertake the work.
[1][2] From 1964 to her retirement, she was the head curator of the moss herbarium at the Swedish Museum of Natural History.
She continued to work at the museum after her retirement, producing the Illustrated Flora of Nordic Mosses by 1998.