Ellen Hutchins

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Ellen Hutchins (1785 – 1815]]) was an Irish botanist.

Hutchins was from Ardnagashel, Ballylickey, where her family had a small estate on the shores of Bantry Bay, County Cork. Her father was a magistrate and died when she was two, leaving a wife and six children. She moved to Dublin and was looked after by Dr. Whitley Stokes, a medical doctor and naturalist. She befriended Scot James Townsend MacKay (1775-1862), a curator at the Botanic Garden of Trinity College. His influence helped her in the classification of plants she was collecting. She contributed to his Flora Hibernica. Hutchins was an avid collector of cryptogamic species, and their pictorial representations. She collected around her homeplace and in Belfast and in the West of Ireland. She had a major influence in the collection and line drawing of seaweeds. In 1807 these were sent to Dawson Turner's Fuci. She also contributed in 1804 to his Muscologiae Hibernicae Specilegium, the first work on Irish mosses. She contributed to Lewis Weston Dillwyn's work British Confervae. Her rare finds included lichens, and three species are called after her:

• Lecania hutchinsiae
• Pertusaria hutchinsiae
• Enterographa hutchinsiae.

On her death her collection passed to Dawson Turner and are now in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, with some in Sheffield City Museum.

[edit] See also

• Historic Cork Gardens
• List of Cork people
• List of Irish people
• Glengarriff

[edit] External links

• Irish Scientist Article
• Sheffield City Museum
• University of California, Letters of Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner 1807-1814
• Kew archive
• Kew archive
• Irish Universities Promoting Science

[edit] References

• Patricia Butler,Irish Botanical Illustrators, Antique Collectors Club, London 2000 ISBN 1-85149-357-3
• Dawson Turner, Fucci Vol. IV, London 1807-1819,
• Robert Braithwaithe The British Moss-Flora, London 1887-1905