To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   3 February [1878]

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Feb. 3d

My dear Dyer

Your letter is a splendid one for me, & I have now got all the seeds & all the information which I require; so that I shall cause no bother for a good long time as I hope.1

I will now run through your letter.

Fritz Müller evidently had no idea to what genus his grass belonged. Did I tell you that where trampled down on sides of roads it throws up large panicles of open true flowers.2

You shall have Araujia when fruit ripe.—3

My man Lettington will be as proud as a Peacock, when he hears what Mr Lynch says.—4

With respect to Amphicarpa fruit, I thought only of protection from birds & Mr Bentham’s & your suggestion is quite new to me & seems very probable, more especially as it explains the first steps in gaining a hypogean habit. Hooker will look to some reference about burying melons &c— he thinks there is another motive:—5

I will send your remarks & the drawing to Saporta.6

With hearty thanks | Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Endorsement: ‘/78’

2
The grass was probably mentioned in a missing part of the letter from W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, [before 3 February 1878]. CD noted a roadside grass that produced panicles of perfect flowers after being cut down in Forms of flowers, p. 333; Müller had described it in his letter of 25 March 1877 (Correspondence vol. 25).
3
CD had previously given Thiselton-Dyer fruits of Araujia sericifera (common moth-vine or cruel plant); see letter from W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, 29 January 1878 and n. 12.
4
Thiselton-Dyer’s letter of [before 3 February 1878] is incomplete, but he evidently told CD that Richard Irwin Lynch, foreman of the propagating department at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, had praised CD’s gardener, Henry Lettington, probably for his skill in raising plants of Araujia sericifera, which is native to Brazil and Peru. Lynch had been assisting CD with observations for Movement in plants; see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to R. I. Lynch, 14 September 1877.
5
George Bentham; see letter from W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, [before 3 February 1878] and n. 4. Amphicarpa (a synonym of Amphicarpaea) is a small genus of vines in the legume family, Fabaceae; the flowers of some species have the ‘hypogean habit’ of burying themselves in the ground after fertilisation. Joseph Dalton Hooker’s ‘other motive’ has not been identified.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

3.2 large] interl
5.1 a] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11344,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11344