From George Henslow   25 September 1869

St John’s Parsonage | St John’s Wood

Sep 25 /69

Dear Mr Darwin.

Many thanks for the pamphlet sent, & duly received—on additions to fertility of Orchids;1 & which has interested me much. I must apologize for not having returned a paper on Phyllotaxis. I cannot understand part of it at all; viz: about the “rectangle” & the letters to the fig I found are wrong in some places.2 Though the rest of the paper is interesting.

I beg to send you a copy of my Expression on same subject.3

Hoping you are in good health | believe me | yrs very truly | Geo Henslow

Ch Darwin Esq

1
The reference is to ‘Fertilization of orchids’.
2
Henslow refers to C. de Candolle 1865. See C. de Candolle 1865, p. 208, for the ‘rectangle’ and p. 205 for the figure. CD’s annotated copy, a separately paginated offprint, is in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection–CUL. For CD’s own interest in phyllotaxy, see Correspondence vol. 11.
3
Henslow had presented a paper on phyllotaxy at the Linnean Society in April 1868 (Henslow 1868). See also Correspondence vol. 16, letter from George Henslow, 13 April 1868.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-6909,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-6909