naturalist

ESTELLE THOMSON. A versatile little lady is Mrs. Estelle Thomson, the author of a charming booklet on Australian wild flowers. Living in happy domesticity in her home on the Eight Mile Plains, she is within easy reach of her beloved bush and its rich harvest of shrub and vine and flower. Mrs. Thomson chose her parents well, inheriting from one her love of nature, and from the other artistry that with a deft touch of pencil and brush can make form and colour the medium of her beauty. At the beginning of the year, Mrs. Thomson was elected as President of the Queensland Naturalist Club, an honour that has only been accorded to one other woman in this State. Botanists, of course, have named and labelled all our Queensland flowers. Mrs. Thomson is interested in an attempt being made to add fanciful descriptive names to many of these flowers—names that the children growing up will remember and love. Not content with helping her own three young Queenslanders to study nature, she has visited a country school week-in and week-out to teach the students there something of the joy and loveliness he found in bushland. A fitting title for her is surely this: "The little lady of the flowers." FLAME. Source: trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/182842542# The Week, 27, May 1931

Nymphaea gigantea is a species of aquatic perennial herbaceous plant native to Australia and New Guinea.[2][3] N. gigantea is a tropical and sub-tropical species that establishes tubers in the muddy bottoms of still waters. Petals can be seen to be a light purple-blue when they first blossom. As they become mature plants they become a light blue, or can even be white.[4] Due to its blue-white color, it is also known as “Blue Cloud", and typically flowers between the months June and July. Source: inaturalist.ala.org.au/taxa/334777-Nymphaea-gigantea

Lantern slides are positive transparent photographs made on glass and viewed with the aid of a “magic lantern,” the predecessor of the slide projector. Lantern slide plates were commercially manufactured by sensitizing a sheet of glass with a silver gelatin emulsion. The plate was then exposed to a negative and processed, resulting in a positive transparent image with exceptional detail and a rich tonal range. Lantern slides were used for home entertainment and public lectures, and they were displayed in photographic exhibitions. Alfred Stieglitz made lantern slides throughout the 1890s. He published numerous articles on how to create more effective lantern slides and he frequently exhibited them at camera clubs and in photographic exhibitions. There are no examples in the Key Set. Source: www.nga.gov/research/online-editions/alfred-stieglitz-key...

Tecama [tecoma] australis (Wonga Wonga Vine). Additional title: Tecoma australia (Pandorea pandorana). Source: digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-b7ca-a3d9-e040...