From J. D. Hooker   22 July 1871

Royal Gardens Kew

July 22/71

Dear Darwin

Abutilon being a large genus in which it is not easy to find new specific names, I have gibbetted you as A. Darwinianae for Fritz Mueller’s new species. Do you know where he got it? The habitat on the ticket of his dried specimen in our Herb.m is “Capivary”, a place N.E. of Rio, according to my maps.1

We are all very pleased to hear of Henrietta’s intended as a man worthy of her.2 Your feelings must be very mixed I fear in respect of the prospect of losing her, & I both envy & pity you & Mrs Darwin.

I am very busy here. You go soon I hear to the country. My wife takes Harriett to a German (Berlin) school sometime about Aug 10th.—3

Ever yr affec | J D Hooker

Where did you grow the Abutilon in a House or in the open ground.

1
See letter to J. D. Hooker, 21 March [1871] and n. 2, and letter from J. D. Hooker, 26 March 1871. A coloured lithograph and description of Abutilon darwinii was published in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 3d ser. 27 (1871): 5917. Hooker mentioned that, in addition to the plants raised from seed sent by CD, there were dried specimens in the herbarium at Kew that had been sent by Fritz Müller in 1869. Rio Capivari is a small river in eastern Santa Catarina, inland from Desterro (now Florianópolis); Müller passed by it on his excursion to Boa Vista in May 1868 and collected the Abutilon seeds there (Fritz Müller 1869, p. 355; West 2003, p. 70 (map), pp. 151–7).
2
Henrietta Emma Darwin was engaged to marry Richard Buckley Litchfield (see Emma Darwin (1915) 2: 204).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-7877,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-7877