‘Just recently I’m too tired to write . . .’ she closes.
On 13 July 1950, a meeting of the Field Naturalists Club was held in Scots Hall, Russell Street, Melbourne. Edith and Dorothy were guests of honour. They had not been to a meeting for a while. Edith was rarely well enough these days to make the trip into town. Many of those assembled were old friends, but there were many more new faces, unfamiliar to them, a new generation coming through. But most of them knew her name and her work.
‘Mrs Edith Coleman’s amazing discoveries of the pollination processes in certain orchids,’ said James H. Willis, ‘made breathless reading from 1930.’
The Field Naturalists Club was unreservedly proud of the achievements of its female membership.
‘The FNCV noted with pleasure that one of its members had again been the successful candidate for the Australian Natural History Medallion, but this pleasure was heightened by the fact that a very worthy lady would receive the 1949 award – the first of her sex to do so,’ announced Willis. ‘No member of the Club has a more distinguished record than Mrs. Edith Coleman, and the volume and variety of her writing simply astounds one; she has a genius for accurate scientific observation, which is imparted in delightfully readable, descriptive phrases that bespeak also a wide knowledge of classical literature.’
The natural history medallion was proposed in 1939 to recognise those who had made an outstanding achievement in the field of natural history. The award was convened by the Field Naturalists, but nominations were drawn from over 30 natural history clubs from across Australia, the Bird Observers, the Bread and Cheese Club, the Gould League, the Microscopical Society, the Forest League and many others. Nominations could be for anyone, member or not, and stood for consideration over three years.
The first award, in 1940, had been given to the ornithologist and nature writer Alec Chisholm; the next to the palaeontologist Frederick Chapman. The award celebrated those who had ‘increased popular or scientific knowledge of Australian flora and/or fauna, including man’ through conservation, research, literature, ‘or any other means approved by the Award Committee’. Awardees included the ecologist David Fleay (1942), teacher Major H. W. Wilson (1943), the botanist J. M. Black (1944), ethnologist C. P. Mountford (1945), Queensland Museum director Heber Longman (1946), writer Philip Crosbie Morrison (1947) and the Western Australian palaeontologist Ludwig Glauert (1948).
And now, the first woman was to be added to that list.
‘Her own amazing achievements,’ Willis added, ‘can hardly be considered apart from the sympathetic collaboration of her daughter, Miss Dorothy Coleman.’
The natural history medallion was presented to Mrs Edith Coleman by Professor Turner for her outstanding work. The Ararat Field Naturalists sent their congratulations and best wishes to Edith by telegram, as did former president and club members, Mr and Mrs Stan Colliver. The evening concluded in appropriate style.
‘An excellent supper and conversazione ended a very pleasant and memorable evening,’ the Victorian Naturalist reported, along with ‘tasteful floral decorations of Victorian wildflowers’.
Mrs Edith Coleman of Blackburn, with angelica from her garden, photo taken by her older daughter Dorothy
In the 1950s, Edith began to experience discomforting symptoms – perhaps heartburn, or loss of appetite. She may not have noticed increasing nausea or tiredness. Her GP did not think there was anything to be concerned about but eventually he referred Edith to a leading general surgeon, a friend of the family.
The condition was not benign. Edith had advanced bowel cancer. It was too late to operate.
There is little sign that Edith’s productivity declined in her last year of life. She published twelve papers in 1950: precisely the average number of papers she had been publishing each year over her 29-year working life. She published six papers in the first six months of 1951. But publications suffer some time lag in production. Some of these could have been written before she fell ill. I don’t know when she was diagnosed, but early-stage bowel cancer is often symptomless. By the time the disease is noticeable it is usually well progressed. In 1950, inoperable final-stage bowel cancer patients were rarely expected to live beyond six months. She may well have only been diagnosed in December 1950.
A sketch of Edith by Dorothy
A charred and wizened hand grips my hair from an overhanging branch. I knock it away, panicked, and it comes loose from the tree, clinging to me with crooked fingers. We often find the stumps of dead mistletoe fallen from the trees above. I am struck by how invisibly they integrate themselves into the vegetation when alive, their leaves mimicking the shape and colour of their host, but shrivel like Dorian Gray when detached from their life-giving host. Some species mimic the needle-like sheoaks, others the heart-shaped juvenile eucalypt leaves, even the fleshy round leaves of mangroves. How and why mistletoes mimic their hosts is as much a mystery to evolutionary biologists as orchid pollination was before Edith’s work. Australia is home to such a diversity of deceptive mimics – orchids, mistletoes, spiders, ants and cuckoos. Perhaps it is the continent’s long ecological isolation, relatively free from disruptions by new species, that has enabled the evolution of such complex interspecific interactions.
In a healthy ecosystem, with older more established trees, the parasitic mistletoes seem to be kept in check, but in stressful or disturbed conditions they rapidly drain the strength of their victims.
‘Here at my gate,’ wrote Edith from Healesville, ‘are three stark trees (grey box and ironbark), mistletoe victims, and within the space of 100 yards up or down the path, and opposite, are scores of once lovely trees in
