Lichens – ‘very beautiful and very interesting’
On This Day, 215 years ago, on 7th April 1810, Ellen wrote to Dawson Turner. It was a very short letter for Ellen. It stemmed from her anxiety about Dawson Turner’s health, having not heard from him since 28th January. Read the whole letter HERE.
Anxiousness
Ellen shows her anxious nature in other letters, particularly in the winter, expressing fears about illness of friends and family. In this instance, in Spring, early April, she was still anxious.
Projects
As we saw in Ellen’s last letter, she had many botanical projects on the go at once. Even in this short letter, Ellen mentioned species across the whole range of non-flowering plants that she studied: marine algae (seaweeds), freshwater algae, lichens, mosses and liverworts.
Ellen had been successful in the hope expressed in her letter of 20th February of finding new or different Confervae. She wrote: “I have since found four or five”.
Lichens – variable and puzzling / very beautiful and very interesting / provoking but alluring
Lichens are a particular focus for Ellen in April 1810. Ellen wrote:
“The Bæomyces are variable & puzzling beyond any thing I have ever seen. How they do vary! & run into each other. You shall have every thing this place produces, with all my doubts & thoughts. The more I find the less I can see.”
The Baeomyces were one of two ‘tribes’ of lichens that Dawson Turner had written about in January, saying:
“Nobody understands [them] as they should do. These, therefore, I recommend to your special care; they are very beautiful & very interesting.”
Earlier, in July 1809, he had written about lichens:
“I would even wish you to delay your list of Bantry Plants till next Spring, in the trust that you may by that time be able to add to it some sort of a catalogue of these provoking, but (like some other provoking things) alluring, vegetables.“
How many?
I have just been reading an Occasional Paper (No 11) from Glasnevin, written by Michael Mitchell in 1998, that lists finders of lichens in Ireland. In it he writes about Ellen Hutchins that “five currently valid lichen species have been described from her material”.
We know from research by Mark Hill and Chris Preston, published last year in the British Bryological Society’s Journal (the Society covers Ireland as well) that Ellen found three mosses and 14 liverworts. Now I am trying to establish how many marine algae (seaweeds) and freshwater algae she found.
Where found
Ellen wrote of lichens that she had found “Parmelia farinacea with shields on the upper branches of an apple tree that was cut down”. Her plant list often notes where she found plants, with one unidentified Parmelia called No 161 noted as found “on an apple tree at Ballylickey” and Parmelia diatrypa, mentioned in this letter, noted as “very common on mountains”.
‘Very beautiful and very interesting’
The image above is a painting by Shevaun Doherty of lichens on a willow twig from Snave beach near Ballylickey (2018). It was commissioned by the Ellen Hutchins Festival for use on the cover of a little booklet – Snave Beach Lichen & Tree micro-nature trail by Howard Fox and Maria Cullen. The trail is available to download for free from the Learning to Love Lichens page or buy for €5 in the Online Shop. The lichens on the willow are Usnea subfloridana and Parmotrema perlatum.
Read the whole 7th April 1810 letter HERE.
The next letter in the Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner correspondence of 1810 is on 18th April 1810 and there will be a blog post here on 18th April 2025.
Madeline Hutchins
Researcher on Ellen and her great-great-grandniece
7th April 2025