To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   5 April 1878

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

April 5— 1878

My dear Dyer

I have just read in Nature the review of Forms of Flowers, & I am sure that it is by you.—1 I wish with all my heart that it deserved one quarter of the praise which you give it. Some of your remarks have interested me greatly.— I knew nothing about the wonderful nature of the so called peduncle of Arachis.—2 Hearty thanks for your generous & most kind sympathy, which does a man real good, when he is as dog-tired as I am at this minute with working all day, so goodbye

C. Darwin

The peduncle of Cyclamen Persicum does bow downwards with force enough slight to impress sand, though it does not become at all spiral.3

1
The anonymous review appeared in Nature, 4 April 1878, pp. 445–7. Thiselton-Dyer was named as the reviewer in Forms of flowers 2d ed., p. xi.
2
Species in the genus Arachis, which includes groundnuts (peanuts), bury their ovaries but have conspicuous flowers; Thiselton-Dyer suggested that the elongation of the calyx tube, at the bottom of which was the ovary, was the mechanism whereby the ovaries were buried (Nature, 4 April 1878, p. 446).
3
Thiselton-Dyer had stated that plants of every species of Cyclamen except Cyclamen persicum could bring their capsules down to the surface of the soil by means of the spiral contraction of their peduncles (Nature, 4 April 1878, p. 446).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11464,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11464