Ɛpsilon

From R. T. Clarke   [after 27 November 1862]1

Dear Mr Darwin

With this I send the strawberries. Hybrid wild, (Vesca + Myatt) Hybrid Hautbois, a chance seedling, and the plant which sent up a crown of true hautbois.2 The Six plants dug up with balls of earth were raised from (as I thought) a very female hautbois by pollen of Myatts British Queen. These seedlgs. were not to be distinguished from ordinary Hautbois, save that they are quite hermaphrodite, bearing freely. I think one was inclined to female developement. Hyb Hautbois 2d generation, is the offspring of a nearly barren seedling from Myatt [TIMES] Hautbois. Has not yet flowered.—

At the last moment I am trying to cram in a plant of Fragaria Lucida, a remarkable looking wild sort from, I think, California introduced by Mlle. Vilmorin.3 Enclosed also two or three plants of Cheiranthus, what shall I say the wild yellow Gillyflower of old walls, crossed by Cheiranthus alpinus, forms a very pretty, very fragrant garden flower. The brassicaceous smell of alpinus has imparted a peculiar piquance to the scent of the ordinary wall flower. | R T C

CD annotations

1.2 and the … hautbois 1.3] underl brown crayon; ‘(see [’from‘ del] other note)’4 added ink, square brackets in MS
Top of first page: ‘1.’ brown crayon
Top of verso of first page: ‘(2’ brown crayon
1
The date is conjectured from the relationship to the letter from R. T. Clarke, [after 25 November 1862] (see n. 2, below).
2
Clarke had written, in response to CD’s letter to the Journal of Horticulture, [before 25 November 1862], informing CD of various crossing experiments that he had carried out on strawberries, and offering to send him a plant of a hybrid individual that had produced a crown of the Hautbois variety (see letter from R. T. Clarke, [after 25 November 1862]). CD apparently wrote to Clarke accepting his offer, but no such letter has been found. See also letter from R. T. Clarke, [April? 1863] (Correspondence vol. 11).
3
The reference is to Elisa de Vilmorin, who named the Californian strawberry Fragaria lucida (now considered to be a subspecies of F. chiloensis, the beach strawberry), and who began to cultivate it in 1855 (Gay 1857, p. 201).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-3837,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-3837