Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
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.
Data from 874 specimens