Ɛpsilon

From C. C. Babington   6 June 1864

Cambridge

6 June 1864

Dear Darwin

I have no means of getting the Stellaria graminea which is rare in this county.1 The plants producing different kinds of flowers grew at Sandgate, Kent. The words in my Manual (p. 54) are “Shorter or longer petals accompany an imperfection of the stamens or germen”;2 but the question has to be reexamined. Does not S. graminea grow in your neighbourhood?3

Yours very truly | Charles C. Babington—

1
No letter from CD to Babington requesting specimens of Stellaria graminea (grass-like starwort) has been found.
2
In his letter of 17 January 1862 (Correspondence vol. 10), Babington had referred CD to the description of two forms of Stellaria graminea in his Manual of British botany (C. C. Babington 1851, p. 51). An annotated copy of C. C. Babington 1851 is in the Darwin Library–CUL (see Marginalia 1: 27–8). Babington refers here to the fifth edition of his work (C. C. Babington 1862), in which the description appears on pp. 54–5. In Forms of flowers, p. 313 n., CD cited this sentence from C. C. Babington 1851 to help explain why he had omitted Stellaria graminea from his discussion of cleistogamic flowers. CD misquoted, giving ‘shorter and longer petals’ for ‘shorter or longer petals’. See also CD’s notes in DAR 111: A51.
3
In his letter to Babington of 20 January [1862] (Correspondence vol. 10), CD wrote: ‘I think Stellaria graminea grows here (but I know our British plant very imperfectly) & I must look sharp after it & get its seeds.’

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-4521,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-4521