A beautiful book on lichens

The Ellen Hutchins Festival team is delighted with its latest publication — a beautiful book on lichens, by Paul Whelan, with stunning colour photographs and clear descriptions of 40 of the most common species that you can find in Glengarriff Woodlands and Harbour in West Cork.

The lack of any good book on lichens is a theme running through Ellen’s correspondence with fellow botanist Dawson Turner. We think that Ellen would have been delighted with the way in which Paul Whelan provides an introductions to lichens as a life form, explains three common groups of lichens, and then gives photographs and descriptions of those you are likely to come across if you follow in Ellen’s footsteps through Glengarriff.

In January 1808, Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen “I wish I could recommend to you any English [ie in English, not in Latin] work upon the Lichens: Withering’s is as bad as bad can be and I am sorry to say that of this beautiful, &, to me, most interesting tribe no good account is yet published.” Ellen had a copy of William Withering’s An Arrangement of British Plants, which Dawson Turner (and many others) felt did not deal adequately with the Lichens and other non-flowering plants known as cryptogams.

Ellen wrote in March 1811 that she had sent Mr MacKay (the botanist at Trinity College Dublin) a very large parcel of lichens to pass on to Dawson Turner, “which I have good hopes will interest you much.” She added “The Opergraphae are very puzzling. …. I grope in the dark, & can only distinguish by my own observations without description to guide me.” See below for Paul Whelan’s photograph and description of Graphis elegans, one of the lichens that Ellen would have been puzzling over.

See the shop for more information on the book, Oceanic Lichens: an introductory guide to Glengarriff Woodlands and Harbour, and to buy copies. Also available from Bantry Bookshop.