UCC honours Ireland’s first female botanist
University College Cork (UCC) announced it has renamed the Environmental Research Institute (ERI) building on the Lee Road in honour of the pioneering botanist and Cork woman Ellen Hutchins.
Widely recognised as Ireland’s first female botanist, Ellen Hutchins overcame a series of challenges in her personal life to identify several previously unknown species of plants, in and around her native Bantry Bay.
Pictured is Madeline Hutchins, Ellen’s great-great-grandniece and member of the organising committee of the Ellen Hutchins Festival, along with UCC President John O'Halloran. In just eight years of botanising, cut short by her death aged 29 in 1815, Ellen Hutchins discovered many new species, and made a significant contribution to the understanding of seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts.
Pic Michael Mac Sweeney/Provision
Between 1805 and 1813, in Ballylickey on the shores of Bantry Bay, Ellen Hutchins applied herself to the study of a particularly difficult branch of botany – the non-flowering plants – seaweeds, lichens, mosses and liverworts. She also produced a list of all the plants she could find in her neighbourhood, which amounted to over one thousand plants. This would be the first proper account of West Cork’s Flora.
In those eight years, aged 20 to 27, Ellen Hutchins found at least 20 species that were new to science or new to Ireland, and made a significant contribution to the understanding of non-flowering plants, especially seaweeds. She also produced hundreds of exquisitely detailed watercolour drawings of seaweeds. Ellen’s achievements are all the more impressive when we consider that she suffered from periods of ill-health throughout her life, and had extensive caring responsibilities at home.
“The challenges she faced in overcoming illness and balancing caring responsibilities with her own interest in botany, span the centuries and are just as relevant today as they were at the time.
“I hope that UCC students and staff will be encouraged by Ellen's life and her love of nature, and strive to protect our environment for future generations,”
Ellen's great-great-grandniece and member of the organising committee of the Ellen Hutchins Festival
Ellen had returned to Bantry from school in Dublin to care for her ailing mother and a disabled brother. Ellen herself died young, just before her 30th birthday. Her legacy includes ten plants which have been named after her, such as the moss Ulota hutchinsiae (Hutchins’ Pincushion), in recognition of the importance of her botanical studies.
Paying tribute following her death, Ellen’s botanist friend Dawson Turner wrote that: “Botany had lost a votary as indefatigable as she was acute, and as successful as she was indefatigable.”
Now Ellen Hutchins’ indefatigable spirit will be immortalised in the naming of UCC’s ERI building on Cork’s Lee Road.
Today’s announcement also marks the unveiling of the Ellen Hutchins Reading Room within the ERI building, which contains archival material and artefacts such as a number of pressed modern seaweed specimens, framed silhouettes representing Ellen Hutchins and Dawson Turner, a number of books, several letters and a single drawing by Ellen.
The official naming ceremony took place today with contributions from a number of speakers including Madeline Hutchins, Ellen’s great-great grandniece and an organiser of the Ellen Hutchins Festival.
President
University College Cork
This is the second building to be named after a female trailblazer here at UCC, with the Iris Ashley Cummins Civil Engineering Building named in February of this year. We have also celebrated four other female pioneers - Prof Mary Ryan, Dr Dora Allman, Dr Lucy Smith and Prof Aine Hyland - who now have prominent rooms named after them on campus.
We are delighted that Ellen Hutchins will today join their ranks and we know she will also empower and inspire our UCC community.
Director
Environmental Research Institute
Founded in 2000, the UCC ERI in the Ellen Hutchins Building brings together over 400 researchers from 20 different scientific disciplines with expertise in the five broad research platforms of Environment, Sustainable Energy, Marine, Sustainable Agri-Food, and Sustainable Materials.
The naming of the ERI building in honour of Ellen Hutchins is the latest in a series of commemorations by UCC to recognise trail-blazing female role models.
Last February UCC announced that its Civil Engineering Building is to be named the Iris Ashley Cummins Civil Engineering Building, in honour of UCC’s first female engineering graduate.
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