Ellen Hutchins – Dictionary of Irish Biography entry (2009 and revised)
The story of Ellen Hutchins, Ireland’s forgotten first female botanist – RTÉ Brainstorm article (September 2022)
New finds add to the story of Ireland’s first female botanist, Ellen Hutchins – Irish Heritage News (2024)
Ellen Hutchins – Wikipedia entry
Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815): Botanist and Artist – Paper by John Lucey and Madeline Hutchins on the provenance and background of Alicia Hutchins’ memoir on Ellen, and including the memoir itself. (2016)
Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) – Ireland’s first female botanist. Charlotte Salter-Townshend, Women’s Museum of Ireland (2015).
Ellen Hutchins- Ireland’s First Female Botanist. Sarah Dutton (Project coordinator in the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium), The New York Botanical Garden’s Talk Science Blog (2015). There is a video featuring Ellen Hutchins, as part of a Her Natural Histories event on 12 March 2019, and Ellen featured in their Plant Love event in the Herbarium on Valentine Weekend 2019.
Ellen Hutchins: A Biographical Sketch. W.H.Pearson, The Bryologist 21:5 (1918)
Hutchins, Ellen (1785-1815) – botanist. Anne Secord in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). Dictionary entry reproduced here.
Miss Ellen Hutchins and the Garden at Ardnagashel, Bantry, Co. Cork. John Bevan (1981). Includes some family history and a map of the arboretum with tree/shrub lists.
Bantry Bay’s First Lady of Botany. John Ackeroyd, Sherkin Comment 50 p13 (2010)
Ellen Hutchins (1785-1815) a paper by Mark Lawley (British Bryological Society).
National Committee for Science & Engineering Commemorative Plaques. A NCSEC plaque commemorating Ellen’s achievements as a scientist was erected at Ellen’s burial place in Garryvurcha graveyard, Bantry in August 2015.
The New York Botanical Garden’s Virtual Herbarium, is free to search. This is a link to the search results of specimens collected by Ellen Hutchins and stored at the Steel Herbarium which includes Enterographa hutchinsiae and Polysiphonia fruticulosa
The Smith Herbarium: Images of the specimens from the Herbarium of Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828) held at the Linnean Society of London which include some of Ellen’s specimens e.g. Jungermannia trichophylla.
National Botanic Gardens of Ireland Glasnevin. publishers of Early observations on the flora of Southwest Ireland: Selected letters of Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner 1807-1814. Mitchell, M. E. (1999). Scanned versions of books mentioning Ellen are also available online on their website e.g. Flora Hibernica (Mackay, J.T. 1836). The section on hepatics is particularly relevant. They hold a reference folder with photographs of twenty of Ellen’s watercolour drawings of seaweeds from the bound volume at Kew.
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew – Library, Art & Archives. The largest collection of Ellen’s original drawings of seaweeds is held at Kew, in a bound volume, British Algae, and many of her specimens were here before their move to the Natural History Museum. Kew also holds fifty letters to Ellen from botanist Dawson Turner, six letters from James Mackay of Trinity College Dublin, and one letter from Ellen to William Jackson Hooker (later Director of Kew). There are silhouettes of botanists of her time, from a collection owned by Dawson Turner, and copies of Botany books, British Confervae by Lewis Dillwyn and Historia Fucorum by Dawson Turner, with Ellen’s illustrations engraved and hand coloured in them.
Natural History Museum, London. The majority of Ellen’s specimens are in the herbarium here, including at least seventeen Type Specimens. They were moved from Kew in a reorganisation of herbaria in the 1970s. The Library has the manuscript List of Irish Plants handwritten by Ellen, and complied by her from 1809 to 1811.
The Herbarium, Trinity College Dublin. Some of Ellen’s specimens are in TCD’s herbarium, indeed the oldest algae specimens (1805-1810) in the herbarium are Ellen’s. (Webb, 1992). Letters from Ellen to James Mackay are also held in TCD’s herbarium correspondence.
Trinity College Cambridge, Wren Library. Ellen’s seventy letters to Dawson Turner are here, in bound volumes beside letters from all the leading botanists of her day, in this splendid building.
Sheffield City Museum. Forty six of Ellen drawings from 1809-1810 are in the museum’s archives. They hold one Ellen Hutchins specimen; a Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis).
Women in Technology and Science (WITS). Stars, Shells, and Bluebells : Women Scientists and Pioneers, a book published by WITS in 1997, includes a chapter about Ellen ‘The Young Lady of the Lichens’ (Chesney, H.C.G.).
The Irish Society of Botanical Artists Their book, Abitir, the Irish Alphabet in Botanical Art, 2014, includes an introductory essay about Irish botanical artists.
Future Forests, Sea View House Hotel, Organico, Bantry Credit Union, Bantry Tourist Office, The Craft Shop Bantry, Bantry Bookshop, Forest and Flock, Bantry Historical Society, Bantry Library, Masters of Tradition, Bantry Bay Boat Hire, Garnish Island, Ardnagashel and the Ellen Hutchins Arboretum, Bantry House, Bantry & Environs, Glengarriff Woods Nature Reserve,Mannings Emporium Ballylickey, Glengarriff Park Hotel,Whiddy Island.
In the Footsteps of Ellen Hutchins Botanical Sketches & Other Stories, Shevaun Doherty, September 2015
Ellen Hutchins: The Short and Remarkable Life of Ireland’s First Female Botanist Finola Finlay, Roaringwater Journal, September 2015
Ellen Hutchins John Crellin, Floral Images Brecon, September 2015
Sorting Seaweed on Whiddy – October 16 Report on the Seaweed Event for Ellen Hutchins Festival 2016 run by Susan Steele on Whiddy Island.
Ellen Hutchins a scientific maverick. Denise Hall, Irish Examiner (2015)
Ballylickey’s famous botanist was among world’s finest plant experts. Robert Hume, Southern Star (2015)
The Cork scientists who were snubbed by sexism. Robert Hume, Irish Examiner (2014)
Ellen Hutchins, botanist by Sean Moffatt. Broadcast 16th August 2015 on Sunday Miscellany, RTÉ Radio One.
