Cyril Tenison White (1890-1950)

Cyril Tenison White, known to his friends as “C.T.”, was born on 17″ August 1890 at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane. He was the only child of Mr and Mrs Henry White. He came from a long line of eminent botanists being the grandson of Frederic Manson Bailey who was the Colonial Botanist of Queensland from 1881 to 1915 and the nephew of J.F. Bailey who succeeded F.M.

Bailey as Government Botanist and was later Director of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens.

In 1905 after attending the South Brisbane

State School he was appointed Pupil Assistant to his grandfather and in 1917 succeeded his uncle as Government Botanist until his death in 1950.

He presented a plump and homely figure with an enormous memory for the names and properties of plants. He led a very active life within the scientific community of Queensland and played a leading role in many of the state’s scientific societies. Not only was he president of The Queensland Naturalists’ Club in 1918, 1923 and 1943 but he was also president of the Royal Society of Queensland, the Horticultural Society of Queensland, the Queensland Orchid Society and the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (Queensland Branch). Above all he enjoyed being in the field collecting plants and leading nature walks. He collected in all Australian States except the Northern Territory and also in Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, England and the Solomon Islands. Particularly enjoyable were the many excursions of The Queensland Naturalists’ Club, many of which he documented in The Queensland Naturalist. More than 15500 specimens he collected are now lodged in the Queensland Herbarium.

He wrote two textbooks – “An elementary textbook of Australian forest botany” and “Principles of botany for Queensland farmers”- and numerous papers on diverse subjects such as plant taxonomy, weeds and poisonous plants. He described more than 350 taxa and his contribution to botany is commemorated in grass genus Whiteochloa and in more than 50 specific and subspecific epithets.

BLAKE, S.T. (1952). Cyril Tenison White, 1890-1950. Proceedings of the Royal Society

of Queensland 62(3): 35-37.

HERBERT, D.A. (1951). Cyril Tenison White. The Queensland Naturalist 14(3): 43-47.

R.W. JOHNSON

CT Whites Biography can be viewed here: Cyril Tenison White Biography