{"id":1887,"date":"2015-01-02T15:49:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-02T20:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nybg.org\/science-talk\/?p=1887"},"modified":"2015-02-12T10:18:45","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T15:18:45","slug":"ellen-hutchins-irelands-first-female-botanist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2015\/01\/ellen-hutchins-irelands-first-female-botanist\/","title":{"rendered":"Ellen Hutchins: Ireland’s First Female Botanist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sarah Dutton<\/a> is a project coordinator in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium<\/a>, where she is working on a project to digitize the Steere Herbarium\u2019s collection of algae.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\n\"Hutchins<\/a>\n

I recently happened across the oldest specimen that I have ever seen in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium. It was collected in August 1807 in Bantry Bay, Ireland, by a woman named “Miss Hutchins.” While digitizing lichen, bryophyte, and algal specimens over the last two years, I have become familiar with Miss Hutchins’ name. Her specimens\u00a0appear to be some of the oldest in\u00a0these collections, all dating from the very early 1800s. I finally decided to investigate: who was this Miss Hutchins?
\n
\nAs it turns out, her name was Ellen Hutchins. Born in 1785, she was Ireland’s first female botanist. Hutchins\u00a0was introduced to botany after a period of illness by her physician, Dr. Whitley Stokes, who was also a botanist. He encouraged Hutchins to pursue the science as a way to improve her health. At the time, it was believed that the natural sciences were good for one’s health, because they provided outdoor exercise in addition to indoor activity. Dr. Stokes allowed Miss Hutchins to use his books and introduced her to other botanists.<\/p>\n

When she returned to her home in Bantry Bay, Miss Hutchins continued to delve deeply into botany. She focused on cryptogams\u2014plants that do not produce seeds,\u00a0such as lichens, mosses, and algae. By 1806, she was sending specimens to botanist James Townsend Mackay. Mackay sent many of these along to botanist Dawson Turner, who was struck by the\u00a0specimens and decided to correspond with Hutchins himself. Soon, Hutchins was discovering new species and rare plants, and many preeminent botanists took notice of her aptitude and tireless energy for collecting. She and\u00a0Turner became great friends through their correspondence over the years. Also a proficient artist, Hutchins provided botanical illustrations for Turner’s book\u00a0Historia Fucorum<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Hutchins had a difficult home life. Much of her time was spent caring for\u00a0an elderly\u00a0mother\u00a0and a\u00a0brother who was paralyzed. In 1813, her troubles increased when she was forced to move out of her Bantry Bay home by her eldest brother, who had taken possession of the house. In 1814 her mother died, and soon Hutchins moved to the home of another brother, back in Bantry Bay. By this time, however, she had fallen ill and was wasting away due to a mercury “treatment” for her liver. During this stressful period,\u00a0Hutchins said that her correspondence with Turner was\u00a0“the one source of happiness in her life.” She died in 1815, just before her 30th birthday.<\/p>\n

Despite her death at such a young age, Hutchins managed to become quite accomplished in the field of Irish cryptogamic botany,\u00a0collecting\u00a0many rare specimens and discovering\u00a0new species. Many of the botanists who had admired her work named new species after her. In\u00a0naming\u00a0Conferva hutchinisae<\/em>\u00a0for her,\u00a0L. W. Dyllwin\u00a0wrote in his publication British Confervae<\/em> that he “know[s] few, if any botanists, whose zeal and success in the pursuit of natural history better deserve such a compliment.” Elsewhere in that publication, he credits her as the collector of many specimens, mentions her observations about the morphology and habits of certain species, and includes a number of her botanical illustrations.<\/p>\n

Upon her death, Ellen Hutchins’ personal herbarium was given to her friend and colleague, Dawson Turner. Since then, her specimens have been passed along to herbaria all over the world, including, fortunately, the Steere Herbarium.<\/p>\n\"The<\/a>\n

Sources:<\/span><\/p>\n

Dillwyn, L.W. (1809). British Confervae; or colored figures and descriptions of the British plants referred by botanists to the genus Conferva. pp. 1-87, 1-6 (Index and Errata), Plates 69, 100-109, A-G (with text). London: W. Phillips.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Ellen Hutchins: A Biographical Sketch.” W. H. Pearson. The Bryologist, Vol. 21, No. 5 (Sep., 1918), pp. 78-80<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Marilyn Ogilvie, Joy Harvey. Routledge, 2000. Pages 1305-1308<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her brief 30 years of life, Ellen Hutchins established herself not only as Ireland’s first female botanist, but a figure renowned in botany worldwide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[150,425,426,62],"yoast_head":"\nEllen Hutchins: Ireland's First Female Botanist - Science Talk Archive<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nybg.org\/blogs\/science-talk\/2015\/01\/ellen-hutchins-irelands-first-female-botanist\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ellen Hutchins: Ireland's First Female Botanist - 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