‘In the fresh flowers the labellum is very sensitive, springing up at the lightest breath,’ she says, ‘and needs to be held down with paste, or must be chloroformed into a stationary position for the artist or photographer.’
Banded greenhood (Pterostylis vittata) by Edith Coleman
I am struck by the image of a chloroformed orchid, pinned down to prevent resistance, as if it might leap up and run away, as if the orchids have some agency.
Unascribed photos accompany her article on winter orchids for The Argus. By the spring of 1928, Edith was using her own camera to capture evidence of her wasps in the act.
‘I had only three flowers left, and needed a photograph of the wasp actually “in” the orchid,’ she explains. Photography was to become a major feature of Edith’s work in her later years, although she did not think it so. The Argus, in particular, liked to have her articles illustrated with photographs. The quality of reproduction is so poor, though, that the images are all but worthless now. Her articles in women’s magazines were also often illustrated with photos and drawings and, on better quality paper, have reproduced much more crisply.
‘Photography isn’t my long suit, it is really rather a toil to me,’ she told a correspondent in 1932. Her camera was not ideal, being a No. 1 Box Brownie that she bought for 5 shillings fifteen years before.
In time, though, her photography would become a more serious endeavour. By the 1940s she owned a Thornton Pickard 1/4 plate camera on a massive wooden tripod. The former maid’s room, already fitted with a sink, was converted to a darkroom, the small window blocked up and the floor-to-ceiling linen cupboards along one wall supplemented with more kerosene case shelves.
I suspect her photos of huntsman spiders were taken with this camera. The photo of a spider mother with her brood is strangely enchanting. It is not so much the spider itself that I find attractive. I think the attraction that has been captured is that of the photographer for her subject.
‘It was pretty to see how carefully she moved over the sac, with body elevated, feet always placed where no spiderling would be trodden upon’
There is no creature too lowly, too grotesque, or too unattractive for Edith. She admires sawfly larvae or spitfires that cluster on her garden plants, while I drop them with gloved fingers into a jar, shuddering with disgust as they disgorge toxic liquid at one another.
‘These ugly squirming caterpillars,’ she assures me, ‘are in reality princesses in disguise.’
I am unconvinced, inured by the stunted growth of one of my grevilleas, stripped bare by successive generations of these voracious hordes. Wasps, water scorpions, sawflies and case moth caterpillars – Edith has a taste for the weird and the wonderful, alongside more respectable gardening and bird watching. Even her love of orchids borders on the macabre. Her passion is not for the flashy, showy hothouse blooms of tropical species, but for the inconspicuous flowers of the temperate orchids.
‘Spiders and pink fairies!’ Edith declares. ‘They really do seem quaint companions, these weird little spiders and delicate pink fairies growing, as they so often are, in close association. How often in nature we find the grotesque and the beautiful side by side. Not that you will think these spiders really grotesque when you know them better. Each is a miracle of design (or adaptability if you will), and every species has a strangely fascinating beauty that excites our wonder and admiration.’
Orchids that look like gnats and mosquitos – or even ducks. ‘Some of them appear to be veritable imps and satyrs, with wicked-looking eyes and devilish horns.’
Edith is entirely unperturbed by the peculiar, the strange or even the downright monstrous. They are simply mysteries to be solved or puzzles to intrigue. Only patient observation will provide the answers, and Edith has that too, in abundance.
I realise that I have been thinking about Edith as a naturalist first and a writer second. Maybe it’s because I came to know her first from her study of orchid pollination, because I thought her publishing career started with the Victorian Naturalist, because her scientific papers are indexed, catalogued and easier to find.
I have now collected more than 350 papers by Edith. Half are from magazines and newspapers, and half from academic journals. Most of the ‘academic’ papers, though, are published in the Victorian Naturalist, and not all of these are strictly scientific. A great many, at least a third, are observations, descriptive or literary. Some are no more than brief notes.
It’s true that her first papers are about orchids, but for several years they are gently descriptive rather than analytical. It’s not until her first pollination paper in 1927 that she begins any work that could really be called scientific. She is always primarily a nature writer, and even her scientific papers are accessible and evocative.
Her papers are never only for the specialist, but hold the door open for anyone who is interested or curious, always inviting the most casual reader. And yet her most casual papers remained of interest to the scientist.
‘Your papers are most welcome,’ wrote the Harvard professor Oakes Ames, ‘and I want them all including newspaper clippings.’ ‘You certainly have the knack of always presenting your matter interestingly, always convincingly,’ agreed Dr Richard S. Rogers. ‘I never miss your paper in the Naturalist’.
Edith’s approach was appreciated by the editorial board of the Victorian Naturalist.
‘The majority of our members prefer their nature knowledge submitted in pleasing natural habiliments such as you present,’ said the acting editor Charles Daley, ‘in which knowledge of the subject, an attractive style and literary quality are combined. A field magazine should not be so strictly bound in its “formal cut”
