Frederick Strange

Frederick Strange (c. 1826 – 15 October 1854) was a collector of plant and animal specimens during the early colonisation of Australia. He collected bird specimens for John Gould. He was killed in a conflict between his group and natives on South Percy Island. The water lily Nymphaea gigantea was collected by him and sent to England where it was named by William Hooker.

Life and work Strange was apparently born in Aylsham, in Norfolk, England, tentatively given as 1826 by his earliest biographer although more likely to between 1810 and 1818. Strange supplied specimens to botanists, ornithologists and other workers, including the previously undescribed Prince Albert's lyre-bird Menura alberti, and others used as types for bird species described by John Gould: sooty owl Strix tenebricosa, plumed frogmouth Podargus plumiferus, pale-yellow robin Eopsaltria capito, mangrove honeyeater Ptilotis fasciogularis and rufous shrike-thrush Colluricincla rufogaster.

Strange accompanied John Lort Stokes in 1848 on a voyage to survey New Zealand. He returned to England with his family in 1852, taking with him a substantial collection of specimens. Notices in contemporary English newspapers described his seeds and specimens when he arrived, crediting him with the introduction to England of the plant Nymphaea gigantea as a living specimen. That species, an aquatic plant with large flowers that was compared to celebrated exotic Victoria amazonica, was then named and described by William Hooker and illustrated by Walter Hood Fitch. the youngest of whom was born after Strange's death.

His grandson, Frederick Resolute Strange, provided field notes, letters and other material to early biographers, J. H. Maiden's first notice published in 1908 and H. M. Whittell's more extensive biographical article in 1947.