Eloise Butler

After graduating from high school in Lynn, Massachusetts, Butler was educated at the Eastern State Normal School, a teaching college located in Maine. The 1906 yearbook at South High School, where she had been a teacher, warned that students should avoid taking botany with Eloise Butler if they did not enjoy "10 mile walks through bog and swamp in quest of unobtainable flora", according to an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In 1911, she retired from her 37-year teaching career to become the first curator of the Minneapolis Wildflower Garden that she had helped to establish. Despite the length of her teaching career, she wrote that "in my next incarnation, I shall not be a teacher". == Botany and gardening ==

Since her early years, Butler had been interested in botany. At the family farm in Appleton Ridge, she had learned the names and uses of plants that grew nearby from her aunt, according to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune. Desmids, an order of algae, particularly interested her and she discovered a dozen new varieties - one of which, Cosmerium eloisenum, was named after her. A further motivation for the garden's establishment was as a resource for botany students to observe the native flora. As the garden's curator, she collected flora native to Minnesota and transplanted it to the garden, recorded in her Garden Log - for example, orchids, asters, Cornus, and Drosera. == Personal life ==

Eloise Butler was born in Appleton in rural Maine on August 3, 1851. Since her early years, she had been interested in botany. At the family farm in Appleton Ridge, she had learned the names and uses of plants that grew nearby from her aunt, according to an article in the Minnesota Star Tribune. Both of her parents were teachers At the ceremony, a pin oak (Quercus palustris) was planted in her honour, a tablet installed to commemorate her, and her ashes were scattered. == References ==