She finds anything
Ellen could wait no longer for a letter from him, she felt that she must send her latest find, the fruit of a lichen, to Dawson Turner with a letter, written on 7th May 1811, 210 years ago today.
This is the fourth in a series of five letters, written On This Day 210 years ago. The series started on 8th March and the next letter, the fifth and last in the series was written on 29th May.
The text of the letter is here: https://ellenhutchins.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/EH-to-DT-letter-18110507.pdf
‘I shall be sure of finding what you desire.’
Ellen played with the notion that her ability to find significant plants is linked to DawsonTurner’s requests for her to look for them. Much comment was made by fellow botanists of Ellen’s ability to find things, and it has been said in biographical notes about her that Sir James Smith, (author of English Botany and founder of the Linnean Society) said, when writing his English Flora (1824-5), ’he believed she could find anything’. William Jackson Hooker wrote in his British Jungermanniae about J. exsecta, ‘This singular species of Jungermannia seems to be confined to the two most eastern counties of the Kingdom, at least I have never heard of its being found in any other places, excepting, indeed, very lately near Bantry, by Miss Hutchins, of whom it may almost with truth be said, that she finds every thing.’
Ellen and the Cryptogams
This letter was written a month after the last one, so covers Ellen’s botanising in that time period. It shows that Ellen was concerned with all of the non-flowering plants known as cryptogams. She wrote about a lichen, Lecidea pustulata, a moss, Calliergon stramineum, liverworts / Jungermanniae, and mentions Confervae which are algae, and in Ellen’s time included both freshwater algae and seaweeds or sea plants as Ellen called them.
‘Some of the most beautiful of the minute works of nature’
Ellen showed a great appreciation of beauty and enthused about plant details visible through her microscope. She seems to have derived particular pleasure from studying tiny details and ‘minute works of nature’. A whole wonderful world opens when they are viewed through a microscope, hand lens, or, for us, a mobile phone’s camera. The picture above is of Straggling Pouchwort, Saccogyna viticulosa. Some of Ellen’s specimens of this are held in the Steere Herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden.
Madeline Hutchins
Researcher on Ellen and her great-great-grandniece
7th May 2021