Olive Blanche Davies

Petalostigma quadriloculare from Flora of the Northern Territory

Olive Blanche Davies MSc (27 October 1884 Toorak, Victoria - 1976/7 Adelaide) ^[1] was an Australian botanist and botanical artist, noted for being co-author with Alfred Ewart of their 1917 book The Flora of the Northern Territory, and for producing many of the illustrations.^[2] Olive was the youngest of six children born to Elizabeth Locke Mercer (*c1850) from Kirkcudbright and Sir Matthew Henry Davies (1850-1912) ^[3] of Geelong, the family living at Toorak, Victoria.^[4][5]

She was a government research scholar studying biology at Melbourne University, and wrote a paper in 1911 on Petterd's semi-slug Cystopelta petterdi, and another in 1914 on Caryodes dufresnii, a large land mollusk native to Tasmania.^[6][7][8]

On 22 December 1915 at 'Cluden', in Brighton, Australia, Olive Blanche Davies married Arthur Lyle Rossiter, a lieutenant in the Australian Expeditionary Force, and elder son of Edward Lyle Rossiter of Elsternwick. Arthur had been born in 1888 in Ballarat ^[9] By the end of World War I he had risen to the rank of captain,^[10] and after the war he gave a lecture on gas warfare at Melbourne University, from which he had graduated an MSc. in 1911 and had been a demonstrator in physics from 1913. He had served as a gas officer in the 4th Australian Division in France.^[11] In 1924 he was appointed on a temporary basis as senior master at Melbourne High School.^[12]

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