Eloise Butler

Eloise Butler (1851–1933) was an American botanist, gardener and teacher. She was known for her role in founding the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, the oldest public wildflower garden in the United States, located in Theodore Wirth Park, Minneapolis. The garden was named after her in 1929.

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. 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.