Eleanor Vachell

Eleanor Vachell
Eleanor Vachell circa 1930
Born	8 January 1879 Cardiff
Died	6 December 1948 (aged 69) Cardiff

Eleanor Vachell (1879–1948) was a Welsh botanist who is remembered especially for her work identifying and studying the flora of Glamorgan and her connection with the National Museum of Wales where she was the first woman to be a member of its Council and Court of Governors. The museum now holds her botanical diary, notes, books, records and specimens.

She was the eldest child of Winifred and Charles Tanfield Vachell, a physician in Cardiff where she was born on 8 January 1879, followed in the 1890s by her brother Eustace and sister Sylvia. She went to school in Cardiff, Malvern, and Brighton. Her father was a keen amateur botanist, and from childhood she went with him on botanical trips across the UK and Ireland as well as in Brittany, Norway and Switzerland. She started keeping a botanical diary when she was twelve and used it throughout her life to record expeditions and finds. Her ambition was to see in situ every plant recognised as a British species and she ticked off her finds by colouring illustrations in a reference book. This eventually led to her building up an almost unrivalled knowledge of UK and Irish plants in their native habitats. It is believed she saw all but thirteen species during her life.

From 1903 Vachell was the honorary secretary of a committee preparing the first volume of the Flora of Glamorgan. The editor A. H. Trow, was Professor of Botany at University College, Cardiff from 1905 to 1919, and he offered encouragement to her in her botanical work. As well as contributing to that volume and acting as Recorder for continuing plant-finding in Glamorgan, she contributed extensively to the Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists Society where she was the first woman elected to membership of their Biological and Geological Section and, in 1936-7, was the society's first woman president. She was elected a Fellow of the Linnaean Society in 1917.

She belonged to the Wild Flower Society and the Botanical Exchange Club and went on plant-hunting trips with friends who were also members, including Gertrude Foggitt and Joanna Charlotte Davy. Like them, she had a private income. Her companions and their travels together are described in Vachell's diary. In 1926 she was asked by the British Museum to investigate a report of the Ghost Orchid. This is one of Britain's rarest plants and for many years the Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum of Wales) had only a small rhizome that had been gathered by Vachell on 29 May 1926. In the 1930s she discovered the hybrid Limosella aquatica x subulata with Dr Kathleen B. Blackburn.