Ɛpsilon

From Lucy Caroline Wedgwood   [April–May 1865?]1

Leith Hill Place, | Dorking.

Tuesday

Dear Uncle Charles

I looked at 3 or 4 bunches of oxlips this morning.

We commonly find them either in shady hedge-banks, or else in the woods, where primroses grow;— I think never in the open fields with cowslips.2

In one case there were 8 or 10 plants growing in a group (some very small), but no primrose or cowslips anywhere near (tho in a primrosy wood)   The others were mostly single plants or 2 together—none with primroses or cowslips very near.—3

Yr. affte. niece L C Wedgwood

1
The date range is conjectured from the relationship between this letter and the letter from L. C. or M. S. Wedgwood to [Emma Darwin?], [May 1865], and from the flowering time of the common oxlip. See also n. 2, below.
2
For several years CD had been asking his nieces in Surrey for help with botanical observations. He probably began to receive observations from Lucy Wedgwood and her two sisters, Katherine and Margaret, in 1862 (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter to K. E. S., L. C., and M. S. Wedgwood, 4 [August 1862]; see also Correspondence vol. 12, letter from L. C. Wedgwood, [6 June 1864]). He rarely found oxlips near Down House (see Forms of flowers, p. 71). He published information on where primroses, cowslips, and common oxlips grew in ‘Specific difference in Primula’, pp. 438 and 448, and Forms of flowers, pp. 57, 70, and 71, noting that in parts of Surrey, specimens might be found ‘on the borders of almost every field and small wood’ (Forms of flowers, p. 71).
3
CD had long been interested in whether oxlips were the hybrid offspring of primroses (Primula vulgaris) and cowslips (Primula veris); see Natural selection, pp. 128–33, and Origin, pp. 49–50. He had been making observations and carrying out experiments since 1862 to test his initial view that the three forms were varieties descended from a common parent (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter to John Scott, 3 December [1862] and n. 13). Though CD seemed confident by 1864 of his experimental results indicating that the common oxlip was a hybrid resulting from the crossing of primroses and cowslips, he continued to test this conclusion over the next three years (see, for example, Correspondence vol. 12, letter to J. D. Hooker, 10 June [1864] and n. 17, and letter to Charles Lyell, 9 June [1867] (Calendar no. 5566)). CD’s notes on these experiments, dated between 1862 and 1867, are in DAR 108 and DAR 157a. He published his conclusions in ‘Specific difference in Primula’, pp. 443–7, and Forms of flowers, pp. 55–75.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4370,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4370