Sabine Helms (1866-1929) was a Danish amateur botanist who engaged in the study and illustration of the local flora after emigrating to Australia. Two Australian plant species and the Helms Scrub Reserve are named after her. [1]
Sabine Helms (1866-1929) was a Danish amateur botanist who engaged in the study and illustration of the local flora after emigrating to Australia. Two Australian plant species and the Helms Scrub Reserve are named after her. [1]
Sabine Helms was born in Middelfart, Denmark. She was the daughter of Daniel Wilhem Rudolph Hannemann (1829-1875) and Johanne Jeanette Bernhardine Hannemann (née Løw, 1841–1919). Her father, an engineer, worked on the construction of the Funen – Jutland railway when she was born. He would later serve as secretary of the Royal Danish Agricultural Society. [2] She married Rudolph Andreas Christian Helms (1854-1940). He was the son of pharmacist in Varde and on Fanø Andreas Fridsch Helms (1808-1880) and Margrethe Adamine Juliane (née Holst, 1828–1857).
Sabine Helms moved to Huxley (near Childers) in the Isis district of Queensland in 1895 when her husband was appointed the first manager of the CSR sugar mill. They remained in the area until 1912. Together, they had three children. [1]
Prior to their departure, Helms had followed lectures in botany at the University of Copenhagen. [3] After moving to Queensland she engaged in the study of the local flora, both as a collector and illustrator. She made scientific illustrations of over 90 plant species and left a herbarium of over 4,000 specimens.
Two plant species, Grevillea helmsiae and Geigers helmsiae , were named for her by Frederick Manson Bailey. A painting by her of Geigera was used by him as an illustration in The Queensland Flora (1899-1902). Helms Scrub Reserve has been named in honour of Mrs Helms by Isis Shire Council. [1] Some of her work as a botanical artist is kept at the Royal Botanic Gardens Library in Sydney. [4]
Friedrich Anton Wilhelm Miquel was a Dutch botanist, whose main focus of study was on the flora of the Dutch East Indies.
Marian Ellis Rowan, known as Ellis Rowan, was a well-known Australian artist and botanical illustrator. She also did a series of illustrations on birds, butterflies and insects.
Floydia is a monotypic genus of plants in the macadamia family Proteaceae which is endemic to Australia. The sole described species is Floydia praealta, commonly known as the ball nut. It is a somewhat rare tree found only growing in the rainforests of southeastern Queensland and northeastern New South Wales. The tree has a superficial resemblance to the closely related Macadamia and could be confused with them. The fruit of F. praealta is poisonous.
Robert Wight was a Scottish surgeon in the East India Company, whose professional career was spent entirely in southern India, where his greatest achievements were in botany – as an economic botanist and leading taxonomist in south India. He contributed to the introduction of American cotton. As a taxonomist he described 110 new genera and 1267 new species of flowering plants. He employed Indian botanical artists to illustrate many plants collected by himself and Indian collectors he trained. Some of these illustrations were published by William Hooker in Britain, but from 1838 he published a series of illustrated works in Madras including the uncoloured, six-volume Icones Plantarum Indiae Orientalis (1838–53) and two hand-coloured, two-volume works, the Illustrations of Indian Botany (1838–50) and Spicilegium Neilgherrense (1845–51). By the time he retired from India in 1853 he had published 2464 illustrations of Indian plants. The standard author abbreviation Wight is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.
Charles Austin Gardner was a Western Australian botanist.
Vera Scarth-Johnson was a noted botanist and botanical illustrator who is also remembered for her continual efforts to teach others to treasure the flora and environment of Australia and, in particular, the botanically rich region of Cooktown and the Endeavour River Valley, on Cape York Peninsula, in far northern Queensland.
Nancy Tyson Burbidge was an Australian systemic botanist, conservationist and herbarium curator.
Atalaya is a genus of eighteen species of trees and shrubs of the plant family Sapindaceae. As of 2013 fourteen species grow naturally in Australia and in neighbouring New Guinea only one endemic species is known to science. Three species are known growing naturally in southern Africa, including two species endemic to South Africa and one species in South Africa, Eswatini and Mozambique.
Botanical illustration is the art of depicting the form, color, and details of plant species. They are generally meant to be scientifically descriptive about subjects depicted and are often found printed alongside a botanical description in books, magazines, and other media. Some are sold as artworks. Often composed by a botanical illustrator in consultation with a scientific author, their creation requires an understanding of plant morphology and access to specimens and references.
Ilma Grace Stone, née Balfe, was an Australian botanist who specialised in bryology. She was an author, collector, and researcher of Australian mosses, a subject on which she lectured and wrote.
Winifred Mary Curtis was a British-born Australian botanist, author and a pioneer researcher in plant embryology and cytology who played a prominent role in the department of botany at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), where the main plant science laboratory is named in her honour.
Anisopogon is a genus of Australian plants in the grass family. The only known species is Anisopogon avenaceus, native to Victoria and New South Wales. It is known commonly as oat speargrass. It is a perennial grass growing up to 1.5 metres tall, bearing spikelets up to 6 centimetres long.
Harriet Margaret Louisa BolusnéeKensit was a South African botanist and taxonomist, and the longtime curator of the Bolus Herbarium, from 1903. Bolus also has the legacy of authoring more land plant species than any other female scientist, in total naming 1,494 species.
Grevillea helmsiae, commonly known as Helms' grevillea, is a species of flowering plant in the family Proteaceae and is endemic to Queensland, Australia. It is a shrub or tree with elliptic to narrowly egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base and small clusters of white to cream-coloured flowers with a green style.
Maureen Elizabeth Church is a Welsh-born botanist and a self-trained botanical illustrator. Her preferred technique was that of line drawings and her work is in the permanent collections of the Forest Herbarium in Oxford, the East African Herbarium in Nairobi, the Herbarium at Kew, and the University of Edinburgh.
Estelle Thomson was an Australian naturalist and botanical artist. She authored a number of books, compiled a weekly newspaper column, and gave talks on the radio about Australian wildflowers.
Decaisnina hollrungii is a species of flowering plant, an epiphytic hemiparasitic plant of the family Loranthaceae native to the New Guinea, Queensland, Australia, and in the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands.
Jean Annette Paton is a British botanist, bryologist and botanical illustrator. She has written many books on the bryology of the United Kingdom and the flora of Cornwall, and described several new species.
Janet Louise Cosh was an amateur botanist, botanical collector and secondary school teacher. The Janet Cosh Herbarium at the University of Wollongong is named in her honour.
Agnes Adelaide Donaldson was an Australian botanical collector, governess, and sheep station owner. Part of the expansive network of collectors established by Ferdinand von Mueller to botanically describe and categorise the flora of Australia, she was the earliest recorded woman, and one of the earliest recorded people, to collect plant material around Alpha.
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