’It is a most beautiful plant’
On this day, 215 years ago, 24th July 1810, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner about botanical matters, friendship and poetry.
Read the full letter from 24th July 1810 HERE.
The Lady of the Lake
Walter Scott’s narrative poem is set in the Trossachs region of Scotland and its heroine is named Ellen. The other key botanist with whom Ellen corresponded was James Townsend Mackay of Trinity College Dublin. In a letter to Ellen on 14th June 1810, James Mackay wrote:
‘Dear Madam
I received your letter containing the halves of two pound notes and have got the Lady of the Lake for you. The price of it is two guineas. Almost every copy that has come to Dublin has been bought and I hear a second edition is to be published immediately. I have not read it through but am anxious to do so, for I think it beautiful and very descriptive. I am well acquainted with the part of the country where the scene is laid. Benvoirlich, Loch Katrine, Benledi etc are names which bring former days to my remembrance. The book shall be sent in a box by the coach tomorrow evening along with Dillwyn and the things from Mr Turner. Thank you for allowing me to keep the Synopsis. I will also send three Numbers of E B [English Botany] being all I have yet got. I expect some others daily along with one or two Numbers of Turner’s Fuci of which I have yet but the one Number to send you. Getting books over by Liverpool as Gilbert and Hodges does is often very tedious.’
Flowering carnivorous plants in focus
While Ellen focused most of her attention on the non-flowering plants (then called cryptogams)she did also study and identify many flowering plants.
Utricularia are bladderworts, that grow in fresh water and wet soils. Pinguicula are butterworts. Both are carnivorous, feeding off insects. The bladderworts capture them in small bladder-like traps. The butterworts have sticky leaves that trap insects. Both then digest the insects to gain nutrients from them.
James Drummond (1787 – 1863)
Born in Scotland and trained as a gardener, James Drummond was recommended by James Mackay when Thomas Hincks of the Cork Institute asked Mackay whether he knew of someone suitable for the position of curator at the Cork Botanic Garden. James Drummond held this post from 1808 to 1828 when government funding for the Botanic Garden was withdrawn and he moved to Australia.
See the Early Life section of his Wikipedia entry HERE.
When Lewis Dillwyn travelled round Ireland in 1809 he met James Drummond in Cork and wrote in his journal that he was ‘a young Scotsman with a broader dialect that I ever before heard and is an excellent botanist.’
We don’t know how often James Drummond came to Ballylickey and met Ellen. This is the only occasion where it is clear that they met. In May 1812, Ellen wrote: ‘Mr Drummond, the gardener at Cork, has many mosses that he ought to send you. I pressed him to do so.’ In July 1812 she wrote: ‘I enclose you the Hieracium I promised in my last letter. I begin to doubt that No. 2 is Cerinthoides of which I have a plant in the garden that was given to me by Mr Drummond at Cork, but you will be able to decide by the specimen I sent you.’
Read the full letter from 24th July 1810 HERE.
The next letter in the 1810 correspondence is from Dawson Turner to Ellen on 26th July 1810 and there will be a blog post on it here on 26th July 2025.
Madeline Hutchins
Researcher on Ellen and her great-great-grandniece
24th July 2025