From Philip Henry Gosse   5 April 1864

Sandhurst. Torquay

April 5. 1864

My dear Sir

You frequently allude to the emission of pollen-tubes;1 can you (without much trouble) tell me how to see & identify these. I do not know what to look for, or where, or how.2

I am succeeding in impregnating Orchids of widely different genera with the pollinia of each other.3 Is not this something new?

I see Catasetum is attracting notice.4 In a barrel of Orchids that was sent me last Autumn from the Amazon, there were many great masses of Catasetum tridentatum; of very large bulbs. Do you know any one who would exchange for these, other Orchids, such as Vanda, or Phalænopsis,—even small bits? As as I have much more than I care to grow, of Catasetum.

Believe me | Yours very truly | P. H. Gosse

C. Darwin Esqe

CD annotations

End of letter: ‘Brown.5 | Bush | Lance. | [illeg]’6 pencil
1
CD mentioned pollen-tubes in Orchids, pp. 31, 81, 106, 109, 133, 248, 311–12 and 324 n., and in ‘Three sexual forms of Catasetum tridentatum’, p. 248 (Collected papers 2: 69); see also, for example, Correspondence vol. 11, letter to P. H. Gosse, 2 June [1863] and n. 4.
2
See letter to P. H. Gosse, 7 April [1864], and n. 5, below. Since taking up residence in Devonshire, the zoologist and writer Gosse had become interested in cultivating orchids and had ‘formed a remarkable collection’ (DNB).
3
John Scott had been cross-pollinating different species of orchids, but not different genera (see letter from John Scott, 28 March 1864, and Scott 1863a and 1864b).
4
Catasetum tridentatum (a synonym of C. macrocarpum) was discussed in a paper by Hermann Crüger that was sent to the Linnean Society by CD and read on 3 March 1864 (see letter from Hermann Crüger, 21 January 1864, and n. 6, and Crüger 1864). Gosse may refer to the report of the paper published in Gardeners’ Chronicle, 26 March 1864, p. 294. CD had discussed this species in ‘Three sexual forms of Catasetum tridentatum’ and in Orchids, pp. 236–46.
5
CD may have intended to refer Gosse to Brown 1831, where pollen-tubes are discussed in detail (see, for example, pp. 724–6, 730), and which has plates illustrating the tubes (Brown 1831, tabs. 34–6; see also n. 1, above).
6
CD may have written the names of people he thought might be interested in Gosse’s Catasetum bulbs; John Henry Lance was an orchid fancier (R. Desmond 1994). See, however, the letter to P. H. Gosse, 7 April [1864]. Bush has not been identified.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4451,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4451