violabetonicifolia

Viola betonicifolia

from State Library of Queensland

• Vesna Verencevic said:

  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