Botanist Ellen
For our younger visitors
Botanist Ellen of Ballylickey, Bantry Bay, West Cork. Ellen lived over two hundred years ago. She was born in 1785. When were you born?
She lived almost all her life in the same house, Ballylickey House, right on the seashore and with a river running beside the garden and into the sea. There were fields, meadows, woodlands, bogs, lakes and mountains that she could explore.
As a child, she learnt the names of the wildflowers, and was quick to spot which was which. After she left school, she studied plants further, and became a botanist. She is famous for finding new plants and because she was Ireland’s first female botanist. Find out more about Botanist Ellen here.
Key to abbreviations used in photo captions
HFC – Hutchins Family Collection KEW – Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London NHM – Natural History Museum London TCC – Trinity College Cambridge TCD – Trinity College Dublin