Ellen as a Scientist

Ellen Hutchins

as a Scientist

What did Ellen do?

She was a field botanist or plant hunter. (Many plant hunters travelled to far away places to bring back beautiful flowering plants for nurseries to sell to people for their gardens, or to find plants that could be useful as food, or as timber for building, or used for other purposes. Ellen was a plant hunter at home, in Ireland, and her interest was in the native plants that grow here.)

She found many new plants – ones that had not been identified and named. (Of course the plants were not new, as in ‘just arrived’, but they are described as ‘new to science’ or ‘new to Ireland’ as they had not been seen, named or studied by botanists before, either anywhere in the world (new to science) or anywhere in Ireland (new to Ireland)).

She studied seaweeds, lichens, and mosses very closely and worked out how they grew. She added to the information already known about them.

She was a good friend to other botanists studying these difficult and curious plants (This is how the botanists of Ellen’s day described these plants that don’t have flowers and seeds. Very little was known about how they grew and the spores that they produce instead of seeds. See under Wonderful Plants for more information.) and Ellen was generous in sharing information with them, and sending them plants for their research.

The leading botanists of her time thought that she was very talented and valued her work greatly. Many botanists named plants after Ellen, which is one of the highest forms of respect in the world of science.

How did she do it?

Finding Plants "New to Science"

There is a system for dealing with and naming plants when a new one is found.

It starts when a field botanist, such as Ellen, finds a plant that they don’t think matches anything they have ever seen before. Ellen lived in a very special place for plants, Bantry Bay, West Cork. She found new plants on the seashore, in the countryside, on mountains, and in her garden, on a roadside verge, and on the wall by a friend’s house. Ellen would make a careful note of where she had found the plant and how it was growing.

Ellen would look at it very carefully indeed, including under her microscope, looking at and making written notes on all the little details of it and comparing these with other plants.

She compared it to plants she could see in the wild, and ones she had samples of that she had dried and kept for just this purpose. She also had dried plants that other botanists had sent her.

Ellen would also see if she could find the plant in the botany books that she had.

If she was fairly sure that the plant was new, then she would make specimens by very carefully spreading the plant out onto a piece of paper and letting it dry, or in the case of dry or lumpy ones like lichens, putting them into a small box like a matchbox.

She would parcel up the specimens and send them off to the botanist who knew the most about that type of plant and who described and published new ones in their books.

The botanist publishing the new plant can choose the name for it, within a system that has been running since before Ellen’s time and still exists now. Many botanists chose to name the new plants that Ellen had found after her. This is considered one of the highest honours for a botanist.

Solving Plant Puzzles

Ellen became very knowledgeable about seaweeds, lichens and mosses. She was determined to understand the stages of growth they went through. She would return day after day to see a particular plant develop and catch just the right moment to see it produce spores or be ‘in fruit’.

One particular seaweed, called Fucus tomentosus, played an important part in Ellen’s story. In one letter to her botanist friend Dawson Turner, Ellen writes excitedly:

“I had great pleasure in finding Fucus tomentosus with fruit. I enclose a fragment to show you how beautiful it is in that state. I have got some laid out on glass that will I hope enable you to see its manner of growth and its little capsules but fearing that drying may alter its appearance I have attempted to draw it as it appeared when recent."

ELLEN TO DAWSON TURNER,

27th July 1808

This was very significant. Ellen was the first botanist to find the seaweed in fruit, and as well as explaining the stages of growth it went through, this saved it from being thrown out of the plant kingdom!

Artist as well as Scientist

In July 1808, when Ellen found the seaweed, Fucus tomentosus in fruit, and thought that it would look different when it dried, she drew it to show Dawson Turner what it looked like when alive.

Without photography, drawing was the best way Ellen had of showing another botanist the details of the plant she had seen. Ellen proved to be a very talented botanical artist as well as a great botanist.

One of her botanist friends had nearly finished his big book on seaweeds when Ellen started to make her drawings, but he published some of the drawings with the descriptions of plants Ellen found.

Why was Ellen’s botany important?

Plants are incredibly important to the planet. Plants are needed for human life to be possible. The more we know about plants, the better human life can be, and the better we can look after our planet.

Ellen played a part in helping us understand plants better.

She made significant discoveries about the non-flowering plants – seaweeds, lichens and mosses.

She found at least twenty plants new to science.

She had many plants named after her by leading botanists in recognition of the importance of her botanical studies.

She produced a list of all the plants she could find in her neighbourhood. She listed over a thousand plants. This was the first proper plant list or Flora for West Cork.

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

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