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From Thomas Rivers   6 June 1866

Nurseries, Sawbridgeworth, Herts, | Great Eastern Railway.1

June 6/66

My Dear Sir/

By this post I trust you will receive a tin box in which are some flowers of the Cytissus purpureus elongatus2   You will also find two “plates” or “shields” with the buds cut out   these buds are of the variety of Negundo fraxinifolia with variegated leaves   I did this in spring hoping to obtain a stain as occurred in the purple Laburnum3

I enclose a leaf of this variety & one from the stock below the bud; four buds were cut out on four separate stocks but no stain has taken place either above or below the buds

I am Dear Sir | Yrs. very truly | Thos. Rivers

1
In this letter and later ones, the location of Rivers’s nursery is followed on the letterhead by: ‘Harlow Station is the most convenient for passengers’.
2
See letter from Thomas Rivers, 17 May 1866 and n. 1. In Variation 1: 390, CD reported cases in which Cytisus hybrids had arisen spontaneously, including a hybrid of C. purpureus (a synonym of Chamaecytisus purpureus, purple broom) and C. elongatus (a synonym of Chamaecytisus elongatus).
3
Negundo fraxinifolia is a synonym of Acer negundo subsp. negundo, the box elder; Cytisus purpureus is a synonym of Chamaecytisus purpureus, purple broom. Rivers had been trying to determine the effect of scion wood on the coloration of stock tissue in Acer. See letter from Thomas Rivers, 17 May 1866 and n. 4.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-5114,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-5114