Eleanor Vachell

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Eleanor Vachell (born January 8, 1879 in Cardiff , † December 6, 1948 there ) was a British botanist from Wales. She was recognized as a leader in the knowledge of the flora of the British Isles and became the first woman President of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society and a board member and advisory board member of the National Museum Cardiff , which is part of the decentralized National Museum Wales. Her botanical author abbreviation is Vachell .

Career

Eleanor Vachell was the daughter of the doctor Charles Tanfield Vachell and his wife Winifred Vachell, b. Evans, born. Her father awakened her interest in field botany at a young age . She went on numerous botanical excursions with him, stretching from Scotland to Ireland to continental Europe. At the age of 12 she started keeping a botanical journal. Her aim was to observe with her own eyes all the plant species in Great Britain that had been included in the relevant literature in their natural environment. So she marked each plant species she discovered in the corresponding book. Until the end of her life, only 13 plant species remained unmarked.

Eleanor Vachell first attended a small school in Cardiff. She then continued her education in Malvern and then went to Brighton at St. John's College . A formal education in the field of botany is not stated in the sources.

Act

Epipogium aphyllum

Eleanor Vachell was widely recognized as a connoisseur of the flora of Great Britain. She paid particular attention to the flora of her home county Glamorgan . To this end, she published several specialist articles in scientific journals. She first described three types of plants . In 1926, she managed to track down a piece of the rhizome of the very rare orchid species Epipogium aphyllum , which until recently was the only evidence of its occurrence in Great Britain. Her botanical diary, which she kept until the end of her life, tells the story of her botanical experiences with her friends and leading botanists of her time. For example, excursions are described that served to find certain species of the genera Phyllodoce or Cypripedium , to which, for example, the lady's slipper belongs. The book also gives an insight into the customs of the Botanic Exchange Club in the period between the wars and afterwards. She bequeathed her herbarium , which is considered to be one of the most extensive among British botanists, to the Museum of Wales.

Offices and honors

Eleanor Vachell became the first woman to be elected to the Board of Directors and Advisory Council of the National Museum of Wales in 1925. She twice held the post of chairman of the museum's research commission. She was also the first woman to hold the presidency of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society in 1936. In 1917 she was inducted into the Linnean Society . On the occasion of an exhibition of the Garden of Wales for International Women's Day 2012, entitled Inspiration Botanists - Women of Wales , which documented the women's contribution to botanical science in relation to Wales, Eleanor Vachell was honored along with twelve other women.

literature

  • Renate Strohmeyer: Lexicon of the natural scientists and women of Europe . Verlag Harri Deutsch, 1998, ISBN 3-8171-1567-9 , pp. 278 f .
  • Michelle Forty, Tim Rich: The Botanist: The botanical diary of Eleanor Vachell (1879–1948). National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, 2005, ISBN 0-7200-0565-5 , online (PDF; 25.3 MB) ( Memento from January 20, 2017 in the Internet Archive ).
  • Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie, Joy Dorothy Harvey: The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science. Volume 2: L – Z , Routledge, 2000, ISBN 0-415-92040-X , p. 1316.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ List of the plant species described at IPNI .
  2. ^ A b National Museum Wales: The Ghost Orchid - one of Britain's rarest plants
  3. ↑ NHBS: The Botanical Diary of Eleanor Vachell
  4. ↑ Garden of Wales: Inspiration Botanists , documentation of the exhibition on the occasion of International Women's Day 2012
personal data
SURNAME Vachell, Eleanor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British botanist
DATE OF BIRTH January 8, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Cardiff
DATE OF DEATH December 6, 1948
Place of death Cardiff