She has changed the way I think about our relationship with Australian nature and our place in it. And she has changed the way I think about my writing too. I realise that Edith’s seeds have been planted in many more gardens than she could ever have imagined.
I can only hope that I have now helped to distribute them a little further, where they might grow anew.
Edith favoured an informal Australian cottage garden style with a mix of natives, old-fashioned flowers and herbs.
The overgrown pittosporum hedge is all that is left of Edith’s garden and house at Walsham in Blackburn.
The cemetery in Guildford where Edith’s older sister Harriett was buried.
Walsham Lock, where Edith’s parents met and the children played. Both Edith and her parents would name their Australian homes ‘Walsham’.
Native orchids featured on the cover of this 1922 real-estate brochure from a subdivision in Blackburn, near Edith’s home.
Edith between Dorothy and Gladys on an early motoring outing with friends (driven by James), circa 1910.
One of Edith’s photos of a willy wagtail, feeding its young in her garden.
‘Goongarrie’, Edith’s cottage in Healesville, still looks out over forested ranges.
Edith attached stereographic photos of orchids to her dried specimen sheets to aid in identification. This photograph of helmet orchids (Corysanthes) was taken by Ethel Eaves circa 1930 and was found in a cigarette box donated to the State Library Victoria.
A rare picture of Edith (in the background) with her father, Henry Harms, feeding kookaburras in Belgrave, from the 1920s.
Edith’s younger daughter Gladys wrote much of the orchid section for Alfred Ewart’s Flora of Victoria (1930), here illustrated by Mavis Arnold.
Edith’s work on pseudocopulation brought her international fame in 1928 when her work was published in Transactions of the Entomological Society, with an illustrated plate by her colleague William H. Nicholls.
As Edith discovered, many Australian orchids are pollinated through pseudocopulation. These spider orchids (Caladenia tentaculata) are being attended by thynnine flower wasps on the author’s property.
Edith’s discoveries were connected to those of Algerian judge Maurice-Alexandre Pouyanne by the English orchidologist Masters Johnson Godfery, whose talented wife, Hilda, had illustrated the work of Pouyanne’s Swiss co-author Henry Correvon. Godfery described Edith’s work in his description of this European fly orchid.
‘I have seen your name so often in Rupp’s papers on orchids that I have no hesitation in asking your help for a fellow enthusiast. ’ Letter from Edith Coleman to George V. Scammel in 1930.
Emily Pelloe’s Orchids of Western Australia, published in 1930, described Edith’s contribution to WA orchids and featured some of the orchids she described and named.
A painting of a greenhood orchid by Gladys Thomson, from the collections of Museum Victoria.
A painting of spider orchids by Dorothy Coleman, Edith’s older daughter.
‘Once again war has brought home to the Australian soldier his deep affection for the wattles of his land. Once again sprigs of blossom enclosed in his letters are whispering: “Come back. It’s wattle time.
Edith’s only book, published in 1935, was one of the first guides to Australian wattles.
In 1949 Edith was awarded the Australian Natural History Medallion for her work. She was the first woman to receive the award.
Mrs Edith Coleman of Blackburn, taken by Dorothy circa 1949, with angelica from her garden.
Edith’s entry on orchid pollination for the second edition of the Australian Encyclopedia was published posthumously in 1958. The accompanying plate was by Rosa Fiveash, who illustrated many of R.S. Roger’s orchids.
Acknowledgements
This book could not have been completed without the assistance of a great many people and I am grateful for their support and interest in reviving Edith’s story.
First of all, I must thank Edith’s grandsons, John and Peter Thomson, and their cousin Peter Harms, for their generosity, support and assistance in allowing me to share their family history.
I am grateful to the following people for their help with historical research: Peter Gill for researching Edith’s teaching records at the Public Records Office of Victoria; Janet South, Nepean Historical Society; Robyn Doble, Box Hill Historical Society; and staff at Camberwell Primary School; Traralgon Primary School; Timor Primary School and Glen Forrest Primary School. I’d also like to thank Loris Peggie for her encouragement and early research into Edith’s work as well as Gary Presland and the late Sheila Houghton from the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria.
Thank you to my students and colleagues at Flinders University: particularly Susan Double; Wendy Otero; Monika Stasiak and staff at Flinders University Library. Anne O’Brien and Shari Argent transcribed many of Edith’s papers for me.
I am very grateful to the following organisations for funding some of the research in this book: the Moran Award (particularly Lisa Conti Phillips at the Basser Library); Australian Orchid Foundation (particularly Helen Richards); and Arts SA.
Much of this work could not have been completed without the support of many other academics in the field. In particular, I’d like to thank Jim Endersby, University of Sussex, for his work on Edith Coleman and Anne Gaskett, University of Auckland, for continuing and extending Edith’s work. The staff from many herbaria around the country
