Henry Nicholson Ellacombe

Henry Nicholson Ellacombe (1822-1916) was a plantsman and author on botany and gardening.

Life

Ellacombe, the son of Henry Thomas Ellacombe was born at Bitton, Gloucestershire in 1822. He attended Bath Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford, graduating in 1844. In 1847 he was ordained and spent a year as a curate at Sudbury, Derbyshire, before returning to Bitton as his father's curate. In 1850 he succeeded his father as vicar of Bitton.^[1] Two years later he married Emily Aprila Wemyss with whom he had ten children.^[2] A keen botanist and gardener, Ellacombe grew a wide range of plants at Bitton and exchanged plants and seeds with Kew and other botanical gardens across Europe.^[3] Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker dedicated volume 107 of the Botanical Magazine to Ellacombe.^[4] In 1897 he was one of the first 60 recipients of the Victoria Medal of Honour.^[5]

Works

• The Plant-Lore of Shakespeare (1878)
• Shakespeare as an Angler (1883)
• In a Gloucestershire Garden (1895)
• In My Vicarage Garden, and Elsewhere (1902)

Notes

1. Hill, pp. 40-2
2. Hill, p. 46
3. Hill, p. 151
4. Hooker
5. Elliott

References

• Arthur Hill ed., Henry Nicholson Ellacombe: A Memoir (London, 1919)
• Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker ed., Curtis's Botanical Magazine 107 (London, 1881)
• Dr Brent Elliott, Victoria Medal of Honour 1897 - 1997, The Royal Horticultural Society, (London, 1997)

External links

• Works by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Henry Nicholson Ellacombe at Internet Archive