White also succeeded his uncle, John Frederick Bailey, in becoming Queensland's Government Botanist in 1917.

[1] White married Henrietta Duncan Clark, a field naturalist and avid hiker, at South Brisbane on 21 October 1921.

[1] As the Government Botanist, White aided farmers and naturalists in identifying noxious weeds and evaluating native species for pastures and fodder.

Also, he co-wrote a 12-part, illustrated series on eucalyptuses with William Douglas Francis which appeared in Queensland Naturalist in 1924–1934.

These helped to build up the Queensland Herbarium, where he insisted on keeping full data on distribution of all catalogued species.

In 1944, he instructed Australian Army forestry companies in New Guinea, and conducted surveys of forests of the British Solomon Islands in 1945.