On This Day, 215 years ago, 29th December 1810, Ellen wrote to Dawson Turner. She had been ill again and unable to go out for two months ’until this day’. She gives descriptions and/or make comments on at least eight lichens, a couple of Conferva (fresh water algae) and one flowering plant, a Hawkweed (Hieracium…
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215 years ago, On This Day, 22nd September 1810, Ellen Hutchins received a letter from Dawson Turner and wrote another letter to him, just five days since her last one. It is an informative letter covering botany and much else, including a description by Ellen of her home setting and how she viewed herself. Read…
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On This Day, 215 years ago, 17th September 1810, Ellen Hutchins wrote to Dawson Turner. She covers a wide range of subjects and it has some great passages within it. Read the full letter HERE. The letter ends with a list of 48 Confervae (at that time a genus of marine and freshwater algae) that…
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On This Day, 215 years ago – 13th September 1810 – Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen Hutchins. He expressed concern at not having heard from her. The volumes of Dawson Turner correspondence in the Wren library at Trinity College Cambridge have a letter from Ellen Hutchins to him dated 24th July 1810, so the gap…
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The image above is one of Ellen Hutchins’ specimens of Fucus viridis, now named Desmarestia viridis and commonly known as Desmarest’s Green Weed or Stringy Acid Kelp. Finding it On 15th February 1807, Ellen wrote to James Mackay of Trinity College Dublin ‘Fucus viridis I believe grows some where in this bay. I have got…
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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…
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On This day, 215 years ago, on 25th May 1810, another letter was written by Dawson Turner to Ellen Hutchins. Read the letter of 25th May 1810 HERE. Dawson Turner thanked Ellen for her drawings of a freshwater alga, Conferva foetida ( now Hydrurus foetidus) writing that the drawings ‘are all I could possibly wish…
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On This Day – perhaps, or a few days before or after 7th May, 215 years ago, in 1810, Dawson Turner wrote to Ellen Hutchins after a gap of over three months since his last letter. Read the full May 1810 letter HERE. ‘For the last three months’ The date on the letter is illegible.…
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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…
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Three weeks ago I was in the archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and in the Cryptogamic Herbarium at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London on Ellen research. I had a young researcher, Grace Barrett, to help me take photographs of Ellen’s drawings of seaweed (Kew) and specimens of liverworts (NHM). The purpose of…
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