Olive Coates Palgrave

Olive Hannibal Coates Palgrave (5 April 1889 – August 1963) was a South African botanical illustrator, noted for her richly illustrated 1956 book "Trees of Central Africa".[1]

Olive Coates Palgrave c1918 with her son Deric
Uapaca kirkiana Müll.Arg. from Trees of Central Africa (1956)

She was born in Cradock, Eastern Cape, the eldest of at least 5 children of Ada Mary Hannibal and Albert John Alfred Trollip (1857-1943), a descendant of the 1820 Settlers, and a Cradock sheep farmer who lost his entire flock in a snow storm, leading to his moving to Southern Rhodesia in 1895. His family joined him only in 1900, travelling by train to Bulawayo and then by the famous Zeederberg Coach Company to Gwelo, the Matabele Rebellion and Boer War having delayed their departure.

Her education commenced at the Huguenot College in Wellington, Western Cape where she, and South African mycologist Ethel Doidge, came under the influence of botany teacher Bertha Stoneman, botanist and author of 'Plants and their ways in South Africa'. Olive finished school in 1906.

In 1915 she married Sidney Heneage Coates Palgrave, a Rhodesian civil servant. They raised a family of three sons, Roderic (Deric)(1917), Keith (1926) and Paul (1929), all of whom regularly joined in excursions to the bush. Her son Keith Coates Palgrave published Trees of Southern Africa in 1977,[2] a work which filled a need for a comprehensive reference work compact enough to be used as a field guide. Keith's brother Paul, and Paul's wife, Meg, provided the photographs used in the book.

She died in Umtali, Southern Rhodesia, aged 74.

References
  1. Jansen, Carolize (2011). "Olive Coates Palgrave". Gardens and I. Retrieved 2017-10-13.
  2. Coates Palgrave, Keith; Drummond, R. B. (1977). Eugene John Moll (ed.). Trees of Southern Africa. Cape Town: C. Struik. ISBN 978-0-86977-081-8.
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