Ellen Hutchins was an outstanding Irishwoman. By the time she died at the age of 30 she had excelled in botanical discovery in an era long before women were accepted in the sciences, writes Mary Mulvihill
Glance down any scientific listing of mosses, lichens, liverworts or seaweeds, and you will see Ellen Hutchins's name. Many of the rare and unusual species she found are named in her honour: a lichen Lecania hutchinsiae, a fern she discovered in Kerry, Jubula hutchinsiae, a moss, Ulota hutchinsiae . . . the list goes on.
It is quite an achievement for any botanist, all the more so when you realise that Ellen Hutchins was ill for years, died of consumption in 1815 aged just 30, and seldom ventured far from her home near Bantry in Co Cork. Remember too, that this was before women naturalists were taken seriously, when they were discouraged from publishing in their own name, and when their clothes surely made it difficult to collect seaweed. Yet, despite these difficulties, Ellen Hutchins earned an international reputation as a botanist.
Born in 1785 to a prosperous Bantry family - though her father was not above smuggling French wine - Ellen was schooled in Dublin, at a time when formal education for girls was unusual.
Her chronic ill health set her on her path as a naturalist. A family friend, noted Dublin medic Whitley Stokes, encouraged her to take up a gentle outdoor pastime. He suggested plant collecting, introduced her to several eminent Irish naturalists. Thanks to their encouragement Hutchins became skilled in identifying plants before she was 20.
Intriguingly, she was drawn to the unobtrusive, sometimes microscopic, and often difficult world of mosses, ferns, lichens, liverworts and seaweeds. Naturalists call these the cryptogams, on account of their cryptic and discreet ways. Hutchins learned to identify them, and signficantly, had an unerring ability to discover rare and unusual species, most of which she found around Bantry's warm coastline.
She quickly became friendly with international experts, among them Sir William Hooker of Kew Gardens, and once travelled to England to visit the algae expert Dawson Turner. Mostly though her health confined her to home so naturalists visited her there, keen to see the area made famous by her finds. Some sent plants for her garden.
As well as finding new species, Hutchins discovered that two seaweeds, Fucus viridis and Fucus ligulatus, can dissolve other seaweeds they come in contact with. This information, like all her finds, was passed to a male friend to publish. Her botanical friends did give her credit where they could however, often naming species in her honour and her name often features in botanical books of the day.
Hutchins was also a gifted artist, and she drew all her finds. When she died, her extensive collection of illustrations and dried specimens was bequeathed to Dawson Turner, who passed them to Kew Gardens (some duplicates were passed to other European archives). Most of Ellen Hutchins's collection is still held by Kew where it can be seen today, a fitting place for the work of this remarkable Irishwoman.
For more on Ellen Hutchins, read Helena Chesney's essay, The Young Lady of the Lichens, in: Stars, Shells & Bluebells (ed Mary Mulvihill, WITS 1997).