Gwenda Louise Davis (1911–1993) was an Australian botanist.
She is known for her work on embryology, in particular, for work on the embryology of Australian
Asteraceae
The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...
and the genus ''
Eucalyptus
''Eucalyptus'' () is a genus of over seven hundred species of flowering trees, shrubs or mallees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Along with several other genera in the tribe Eucalypteae, including '' Corymbia'', they are commonly known as euca ...
''.
She started her career as a plant taxonomist in 1945 at the New England University College at Armidale (now the University of New England, and was largely responsible for the creation of the Department of Botany there. After a fire in 1958, which destroyed the building housing the Botany Department, she concentrated her research on plant embryology.
Names published
(incomplete list)
* ''
Brachyscome ascendens
''Brachyscome ascendens'', the border ranges daisy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae and is endemic to Australia. It has mostly mauve daisy-like flowers and a yellow centre.
Description
''Brachyscome ascendens'' is a her ...
'' G.L.Davis, Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 73: 175 (1948).
* '' Brachyscome blackii'' G.L.Davis, Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 73: 207 (1948).
* '' Calotis cuneata'' (F.Muell. ex Benth.) G.L.Davis, Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales 77: 175 (1952)
* ''
In 1936 she married Harrold Fosbery Consett Davis. He died in an aircraft accident in New Guinea in 1944, aged 31, leaving Davis to bring up their three children. Her father was the physician-botanist
Frederick Arthur Rodway
Frederick Arthur Rodway (25 March 1880, Hobart, Tasmania – 1 April 1956, Nowra, New South Wales) was an Australian physician, botanist, and plant collector. He collected spermatophytes in New South Wales and Western Australia.
Biography
F. A. Ro ...
, and her paternal grandfather was the dentist-botanist
Leonard Rodway
Leonard Rodway (5 October 1853 – 9 March 1936) was an English-born Australian dentist and botanist.
Early life
Rodway was born in Torquay Devon, England, the thirteenth child of Henry Barron Rodway, a dentist and inventor of the Rodway life ...