Ramsay, Hilda Eileen   (1886–1961)

Hilda was an amateur botanist and plant collector based at Red Cliffs, east of Mildura, VIC. A founding member of the Sunraysia Field Naturalists' Club, Ramsay collaborated closely with Jim Willis at MEL and regularly sent specimens to MEL for identification throughout the 1950s.

Ramsay's forays into plant collecting began in 1949, when she was put in touch with Edith Packe and Dr Reuben T. Patton at the Mildura Branch of the University of Melbourne. Ramsay writes that she had "been interested always in Nature, especially the wild life but had had no previous opportunity to pursue this interest".

She wished to undertake the University of Melbourne's Botany course by correspondence and, though she was "refused any opportunity" to formally enrol in the University, the establishment of the Mildura Branch nevertheless provided her with the contacts and opportunity to undertake serious botanical study.

Correspondence between Edith Packe and Jim Willis shows that Ramsay was an enthusiastic collector, accompanying Packe and Patton on field trips in the region, as well as keeping a lookout for plants of interest to the University on her own excursions. More often than not, however, Ramsay was accompanied on her collecting trips by entomologist John Plant, another founding member of the Sunraysia Field Naturalists.

Ramsay's collecting activity was confined to the far north-west of the Victorian Mallee. In her own words Ramsay wished "most earnestly to help put this comparatively little known and less cared-for Mallee area of Victoria on the map, botanically, at least".

She began collecting at a time when an emerging conservation ethos coincided with rapidly expanding agricultural activity in the Mallee, and her self-penned biographical notes reveal both her passion and concern for the Mallee landscape: "I wish life was long enough to deal with all its aspects. So much of its almost prehistoric growths and formations are disappearing ever more rapidly".

Before her death Ramsay donated her collection to the Mildura Arts Centre in 1960. The collection was on display at Rio Vista, the building that houses the Mildura Arts Centre, for several years before being removed from display.

Ecologist Dr Bob Parsons subsequently suggested that the entire collection be moved to Melbourne to make it more accessible for botanical research, but the Mildura Council firmly believed that 'the collection should remain in Sunraysia to be enjoyed by future generations of Sunraysia people' (1979).

With the collection remaining unused over 30 years later, the Mildura Rural City Council agreed to permanently transfer the collection to the State Botanical Collection at the National Herbarium of Victoria in March 2016.

Source: Extracted from: Australasian Systematic Botany Society Newsletter 171 (June 2017) p.18-21, with numerous references.

Collecting localities for 'Ramsay, H.E.' from AVH (2021)

Data from 874 specimens