Elsie Maud Wakefield

Elsie Maud Wakefield was born in 1886 in Birmingham, studied botany at Somerville College, Oxford, and then carried out research on the cultivation of fungi in Munich. In 1910 she began work at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew as an assistant in the department of mycology and cryptogamic plants. Five years later she took charge of mycology, becoming the first woman in that post in Kew's history.

She specialised in the taxonomy of basidiomycetes, particularly the thin fungi spread across wood that are easily overlooked on a walk. Such organisms require a microscope, an exact description of the layers of the fruiting body and comparison with a collection. Wakefield also worked on plant pathology and on tropical material. Kew records that she published around a hundred scientific papers and described many new species from Britain and other regions.

Illustration was an important part of her practice. The watercolours did not serve merely to show a handsome cap. They preserved colour, habit, substrate and characters visible in fresh material that changed or disappeared on drying. Wakefield's notes combined anatomical observation with information about habitat, and sometimes about culinary use. Her archive shows illustration as a layer of data tied to a specimen and a text.

From 1945 to 1951 she was deputy keeper of the herbarium. She also wrote guides for a wider public, including The Observer's Book of Common Fungi. She should not, however, be reduced to a populariser. She managed a collection, made identifications and built scientific authority in an institution where women had limited access to senior posts.

Her biography joins two worlds often separated in stories about science: taxonomic rigour and visual communication. Wakefield showed that a good image begins with a good specimen, and an accessible guide with work done earlier in the collection. The surviving drawings and documents allow both layers of that achievement to be checked today.

A field drawing is a stage in identification

Kew preserves more than Wakefield’s finished watercolours. The archive contains correspondence; notes on fungal families, species, nomenclature and arrangement; her photographs; and field sketches. Annotations running around the watercolours show images being made during investigation: they record anatomy, habit, substrate and questions before the material was resolved for publication. Wakefield published about 100 papers on fungi and plant pathology and two British field guides; she became Head of Mycology at Kew in 1915 and served as Deputy Keeper of the Herbarium from 1945 to 1951. The profile should therefore connect three objects—a working annotated sketch, its specimen and the finished illustration—rather than display a watercolour as decoration. That sequence shows which features fresh colour preserves and which can later be tested against fungarium material, while keeping popular communication anchored in collection work.