Violetta Susan Elizabeth White

Violetta White Delafield, née Violetta Susan Elizabeth White (1875–1949), was an American botanist, mycologist, scientific illustrator and horticulturist.

Early life Violetta Susan White was born in Florence, Italy, to expatriate American parents. She spent most of her childhood in southern France. In 1890, Violetta returned to the United States, where she began collecting mushrooms and studying mycology and botany.

Scientific work Delafield was particularly interested in fungi, and her earliest illustrations date back to 1899. She specialized in Gasteromycetes and many of her specimens were collected in New England and the Hudson Valley.

In the early 20th century, Delafield published three scientific papers under her maiden name, V.S. White, on fungi of the Tylostomaceae and Nidulariaceae families in North America. She also cataloged fungi on Mount Desert Island, Maine, to supplement Edward Lothrop Rand's 1894 work Flora of Mount Desert Island. She also studied Geastrales, more commonly known as earthstars, for a manuscript that remained unpublished. Delafield worked with Lucien Underwood at the New York Botanical Garden where she became a registered investigator, and with Charles H. Peck of the New York State Museum. She corresponded with and borrowed mycological specimens from William Alphonso Murrill, the founder of the journal Mycologia. After her marriage, she devoted less time to scientific work but continued to collect specimens in several locations including Buck Hill Falls, Pennsylvania, the Catskills, New York and Litchfield, Connecticut. Her extensive illustrations are particularly significant as fungal specimens tend to deteriorate soon after collection and would often change their colour and form. Delafield's significant collection of specimen was left to the Fungal Herbarium at the New York Botanical Garden, her papers and research materials on mycology and horticulture are held with the Delafield family papers by the University of Princeton. A selection of her work was exhibited in 2019 at Bard College as part of the ‘Fruiting Bodies’ exhibition and has been preserved in a digital collection.

Marriage and family Violetta Susan White married John Ross Delafield (1874–1964) on 14 June 1904 in Manhattan at the Church of the Heavenly Rest and went on to have three children. John Ross Delafield was born in Fieldson, Bronx, to parents from wealthy, prominent Hudson Valley families. The Delafields were related to the Livingston family, who established the country estate known as Montgomery Place, which became the couple's main residence after 1921. In the 1930s, Delafield added a farm stand to the grounds, enabling farmers to sell their fresh produce by the road.

Selected publications

(See Mount Desert Island.)