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Elinor Frances Vallentin

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Elinor Frances Vallentin
Born
Elinor Frances Bertrand

14 January 1873
West Falkland, Falkland Islands
DiedMarch 1924
Plympton, Devon
OccupationBotanist
Spouses
  • Robert Nichol (m.1894)
  • Rupert Vallentin (m.1904)
Children1
FatherWilliam Wickham Bertrand
Relatives

Elinor Frances Vallentin (formerly Nichol; (née Bertrand)[1] (14 January 1873 – March 1924)[2] was a British botanist and botanical illustrator who made scientifically significant collections of botany specimens in the Falkland Islands. She co-authored the book Illustrations of the flowering plants and ferns of the Falkland Islands in 1921 with Enid Mary Cotton, a fellow botanist. This work was regarded as being particularly valuable because of Vallentin's botanical illustrations. The standard author abbreviation Vallentin is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.[3]

Early life

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Vallentin was born Elinor Frances Bertrand on West Falkland, Falkland Islands on 14 January 1873, to William Wickham Bertrand and his wife Catherine Beatrice (née Felton). Where she grew up first at Shallow bay but later moved to Roy Cove.[4] Her father was a farmer, who came from a planter family in Dominica and was also English through his mother Frances, having been educated in England under the care of his uncle Godfrey Bolles Lee.[5] Her mother was the daughter of English soldier Henry Felton (1798 – 1876).[6]

Plant collecting

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While living at Roy Cove and Shallow Bay she collected and studied the plant life in the surrounding area.[7][4] From November 1909 to March 1911 she collected numerous specimens from various sites on West Falkland,[8] which are now held at the British Museum, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew and the Manchester Museum. She also assembled collections of seaweeds that were particularly valuable scientifically. She collaborated with Arthur Disbrowe Cotton, supplying him with specimens, and enabling him to undertake the first comprehensive study of Cryptogams from the Falkland Islands.[7][9]

Vallentin also collaborated with botanist Charles Henry Wright collecting plants for him, supplying him with field notes and illustrations,[10] as well as illustrating his scientific paper The Mosses and Hepaticae of West Falkland Islands, from the collections of Mrs. Elinor Vallentin published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society.[11]

In 1912 Vallentin presented her collection of some 930 plant specimens, collected in the West Falkland Islands, to Kew.[12]

Illustrations

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Gunnera magellanica Lam.

As well as illustrating scientific papers, Vallentin co-wrote and illustrated the book Illustrations of the flowering plants and ferns of the Falkland Islands.[13]

Cecil Victor Boley Marquand regarded Vallentin's drawings as being "beautiful".[12] Vallentin also exhibited her illustrations at the 73rd Exhibition of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society in 1912[14] as well as at the 1924 British Empire Exhibition at the Falkland Islands Court.[15]

The Manchester Museum holds some of the specimens Vallentin used to produce her coloured illustrations.[8]

Publications

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Family

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History

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The Bertrand family has its origins in France, however following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, emigrated to Geneva, Switzerland, becoming burghers in 1704, and began acquiring estates in Dominica in the late 18th Century. Vallentin's male line family name was originally d'Anglebermes (later spelt; D'Angleberne and Dangleben) but when her great-grandfather, a French officer from Martinique surnamed D'Angleberne married her great-grandmother he assumed her family name Bertrand by royal license. Thus becoming heir to her family's estates in Dominica, later inherited by their grandson (Elinor's father), but were subsequently sold under the encumbered estates act as they had been heavily damaged by a hurricane.[16][17][18][19]

Ancestry

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Relations

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Vallentin's father William Wickham Bertrand was the cousin of William Wickham, grandson of William Wickham and Eleanor, née Bertrand. Eleanor's aunt Henriette Bertrand married Isaac de Thellusson, son of Isaac de Thellusson.[20][5][4][21]

Vallentin's sister Nora Bertrand married Admiral Bertram Chambers.[22]

Marriage

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In 1894 Elinor married Australian Falkland Islands Company manager Robert Nichol at Roy Cove. Nichol later became ill, and died in London in 1896.[4]

In 1904 she married fellow botanist Rupert Eugene White Vallentin, the son of Sir James Vallentin (1814–1870), Knight Sheriff of London, Distiller, and grandfather of John Vallentin and Archibald Thomas Pechey. Together they had one child, a son named Thomas (b. 1913).[4][23][24]

References

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  1. ^ Stafleu, Frans Antonie; Cowan, Richard S. (1976–1988). Taxonomic literature : a selective guide to botanical publications and collections with dates, commentaries and types – Biodiversity Heritage Library. Vol. 6. Utrecht: Bohn, Scheltema & Holkema. pp. 651–652. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.48631. ISBN 978-9031302246. S2CID 162400131.
  2. ^ "Vallentin, Elinor Frances". Database of Scientific Illustrators. University of Stuttgart. Retrieved 28 November 2015.
  3. ^ International Plant Names Index.  Vallentin.
  4. ^ a b c d e "DFB". falklandsbiographies.org. Retrieved 13 March 2019.
  5. ^ a b "DFB". www.falklandsbiographies.org. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  6. ^ "DFB". www.falklandsbiographies.org. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  7. ^ a b Professor Margaret Clayton (5 April 2003). Falkland Islands Seaweed Survey (PDF) (Report). The Shackleton Scholarship Fund. p. 1. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
  8. ^ a b Dr D. M. Moore (1968). The Vascular Flora of the Falkland Islands (PDF) (Report). Natural Environment Research Council. pp. 7–14. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  9. ^ Cotton, Arthur Disbrowe (1915). "Cryptogams from the Falkland Islands collected by Mrs. Vallentin, and described by AD Cotton, FLS" (PDF). Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Botany. 43 (290): 137–231. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1915.tb00606.x.
  10. ^ Wright, Charles Henry (1911). "On the Flora of the Falkland Islands" (PDF). Journal of the Linnean Society, Botany. 39 (273): 313. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8339.1911.tb02324.x.
  11. ^ "Book-Notes, News, &c". Journal of Botany, British and Foreign. 53: 38. 1915. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  12. ^ a b Marquand, C. V. B. (1923). "Additions to the Flora of the Falkland Islands". Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew). 1923 (10): 369–371. doi:10.2307/4115417. JSTOR 4115417.
  13. ^ Frodin, David G. (2001). Guide to Standard Floras of the World: An Annotated, Geographically Arranged Systematic Bibliography of the Principal Floras, Enumerations, Checklists and Chronological Atlases of Different Areas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 389. ISBN 9781139428651.
  14. ^ The Seventy-Third Exhibition (Report). Cornwall Polytechnic Society. 1913. p. 44. Archived from the original on 26 November 2015. Retrieved 26 November 2015.
  15. ^ Boyson, V. F. "Official 1924 British Empire Exhibition Guide to the Exhibits at the Falkland Islands Court". The Exhibition Study Group. Archived from the original on 1 June 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
  16. ^ Papers relating to Edmund Rufus D'Angleberries Bertrand of HM Navy and his property on the Island of Dominica. 1820.
  17. ^ "Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  18. ^ "Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery". www.ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  19. ^ "ghcaraibe - Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe -" (PDF). listes.u-picardie.fr. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  20. ^ "ghcaraibe - Généalogie et Histoire de la Caraïbe -" (PDF). listes.u-picardie.fr. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  21. ^ Debrett, John (1849). Debrett's Genealogical Peerage of Great Britain and Ireland. William Pickering. p. 649. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
  22. ^ "The Mariners' Museum Online Catalog". catalogs.marinersmuseum.org. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  23. ^ "DFB". www.falklandsbiographies.org. Retrieved 8 March 2025.
  24. ^ "FROM THE FALKLAND ISLANDS". Botanicus. Missouri Botanical Garden Library. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 25 November 2015.
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