Ɛpsilon

To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   21 March [1881]1

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

March 21

My dear Dyer

I have had a letter from Fritz Müller suggesting a novel & very curious explanation of certain plants producing 2 sets of anthers of different colour.2 This has set me on fire to renew the laborious experiments which I made on this subject, now 20 years ago.—3 Now will you be so kind as to turn in your much worked & much holding head, whether you can think of any plants, especially annuals producing 2 such sets of anthers. I believe that this is the case with Clarkia elegans & I have just written to Thompson for seeds—4 The Lythraceæ must be excluded, as these are heterostyled.—

I have got seeds from Dr King of some Melastomaceæ & will write to Veitch to see if I can get the Melastomaceous genera Monochætum (= Arthrostemma) & Heterocentrum or some such name, on which I before experimented5

Now if you can aid me, I know that you will; but if you cannot, do not write & trouble yourself—

Yours ever very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Wd Mr Bentham6 be likely to remember plants thus characterised

1
The year is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from Fritz Müller, 7 February 1881.
2
See letter from Fritz Müller, 7 February 1881; Müller noted that pollen-eating insects were attracted to the brighter coloured pollen on short stamens, but that pollen from longer stamens was more likely to be transferred to the insect’s body and then to the stigma of other flowers. He hypothesised that one type of anthers attracted insects while the other type ensured cross-fertilisation.
4
Clarkia elegans (a synonym of C. unguiculata, elegant clarkia) was the subject of some of CD’s early research on the differential fertility of flowers fertilised with pollen from the yellow anthers or the crimson anthers (see letter to Fritz Müller, 20 March 1881 and n. 3). No letter has been found requesting these seeds from William Thompson’s nursery at Ipswich.
5
George King was superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta (Kolkata). The Melastomaceae (a synonym of Melastomataceae) is a family of flowering plants found mostly in the tropics; Monochaetum and Heterocentron are genera within this family. Monochaetum was considered by early botanists to be a section of Arthrostemma but was elevated to generic rank in 1845 by Charles Victor Naudin (Naudin 1844–5, p. 48). The nursery firm Veitch & Sons was noted for its stock of exotic plants and had often supplied CD (see, for example, Correspondence vol. 12, letter to J. D. Hooker, 26[–7] March [1864] and n. 6).

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.2 2 sets of] interl
2.1 some] interl

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-13094,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-13094