Ɛpsilon

From W. D. Fox   3 April [1877]1

Broadlands, | Sandown, I.W.

Ap 3

My dear Darwin

It is much easier to ask questions than answer them. “Pulmonaria” does not exactly answer either of your propositions. It does not “look up to the sky nor down to the ground”.2

After looking at it several times I brought Mrs Fox3 & held a council or Inquest upon the body. It is agreed that P: angustifolia looks up, but not very much up.4 “P. grandiflora” (as Sir P Egertons Gardener gave it me) but which I never can see any differences between it & the broader leaved varieties (this has a bit of tape tied round it.) does not look quite so much up.5

But decidedly neither look “down to Earth”.

diagram

These lines are about the angle, upwards decidedly—

In haste yours very truly | W D Fox

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘(Used under Pulmonaria)’ pencil, square brackets in ms
End of letter: ‘(say flowers [‘f’ over ‘F’] projecting obliquely upwards.)’6 ink, square brackets in ms
1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from W. E. Darwin, 4 April 1877.
2
CD had evidently written to either Fox or William Erasmus Darwin regarding the placement of flowers of Pulmonaria (the genus of lungworts) on the stem; however, no letter on the subject has been found. See also letter from W. E. Darwin, [25 March? 1877].
4
Pulmonaria angustifolia is narow-leaved lungwort.
5
Pulmonaria grandiflora is a synonym of P. saccharata Bethlehem lungwort. William Muir was head gardener at Oulton Park, the home of Philip de Malpas Grey-Egerton.
6
In Forms of flowers, p. 110, CD noted, ‘with Pulmonaria angustifolia, it is evident, from the corolla projecting obliquely upwards, that pollen is much more likely to fall on, or to be carried by insects down to the stigma of the short-styled than of the long-styled flowers’.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10923,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10923