Earlier this year, Professor John Parnell of the Botany Department of Trinity College Dublin helped a small team of Ellen Hutchins researchers to hunt in the Herbarium there for specimens of seaweeds, mosses, or lichens collected by Ellen in the Bantry Bay area more than 200 years ago. The story of the search for them…
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On Thursday 20th August 2015, an exhibition opened in Bantry House of Ellen Hutchins’ watercolour drawings of seaweeds. This was their first showing in the Republic of Ireland and their home coming. They were drawn by Ellen Hutchins, at Ballylickey, about four miles from Bantry House, on Bantry Bay. Ellen was born at Ballylickey in…
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In her short life (she died just before her thirtieth birthday) Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey discovered a significant number of new species of non-flowering plants (mosses, seaweeds and lichens) and was a serious scientist before the word ‘scientist’ was even invented in 1833. British Flora. William Jackson Hooker 1842. Hooker (First Director of Royal Botanic…
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This delightful book, The Wild Plants of Bere, Dursey, Whiddy and other Islands in Bantry Bay, published by Sherkin Island Marine Station in 2013, puts on record the variety of wild plants found in this part of Ireland famed for its dramatic scenery, mild climate and sub-tropical gardens. The book examines the history, geography,…
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Ellen Hutchins of Ballylickey was botanizing in the Bantry Bay area of West Cork, Ireland, long before collecting seaweeds became a fashionable hobby for Victorian ladies. Water Colour of Bantry Bay by Louisa Shore Nightingale (nee. Hutchins) Between 1805 and 1812 Ellen was discovering new seaweeds, mosses and lichens, and sending her specimens and drawings to…
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