He also collected for other botanists such as Ferdinand von Mueller and Joseph Maiden, and was known through his work on orchids.

[1][2] Fitzgerald was born on the goldfields in north-eastern Tasmania and at the age of 16 was training for a career in mining, but by the time he was in his early 20s he was corresponding with, and sending plant specimens to Mueller.

In that year he described 23 Acacia species, mostly from the south-west of Western Australia, in the first edition of Journal of the West Australian Natural History Society (which later became the Journal of the Royal Society of Western Australia).

In 1912 he described in Journal of Botany six new south-west Western Australian species of Acacia discovered on these expeditions and three more in 1917.

He died near the Daru River whilst exploring the Bismarck Range in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea.