To Daniel Oliver   18 December 1874

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Dec 18th 74

My dear Prof: Oliver

I have four favours to ask, & these I really believe will be the last. Firstly:— in your note in which you kindly gave me information about the ranges of Byblis, you speak of B. gigantea. Now I copied (perhaps by mistake) the name B. grandiflora from the specimens sent from Kew.1 Which name is right?

Secondly:— Dr Hooker, when here, said he would ask you whether there were dried specimens at Kew of Genlisea ornata of Martius, which is evidently closely allied to Utricularia.2 Warming has described little cavities in the linear leaves forming bladders, & I should very much like to see if the have captured prey.3 I do not know whether it is a water or land plant.

Thirdly: is there any more recent list of the species of Drosera than that published by Steudel in the Nomenclator 1841, as I should like to know how many species exist; though it is of no great importance & would not be worth causing any trouble—4

Lastly & especially: have you any dried specimens of Utricularia montana collected from their native haunts, as I particularly wish to see what sort of animals are caught in the bladders on the rhizomes.5 I found two or three minute creatures in the bladders of hothouse plants; but they would probably catch more & other prey by rhizomes penetrating moss, rotten bark, &c

Forgive me for being so troublesome & believe me yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS(A)

1
See Correspondence vol. 22, letter from Daniel Oliver, 20 October 1874. Oliver had mentioned two species of rainbow plant, Byblis liniflora and B. gigantea. CD mentioned only the latter species in Insectivorous plants, pp. 343–4.
2
Genlisea ornata (a synonym of G. aurea) was described by Karl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in Flora Brasiliensis (Martius ed. 1840–1906, 10: 252). Utricularia is the genus of bladderwort; like Genlisia (corkscrew plants), it belongs to the family Lentibulariaceae.
3
Eugenius Warming’s description of the cavities is in his paper ‘Bidrag til Kundskaben om Lentibulariaceæ’ (Contribution to the knowledge of Lentibulariaceæ; Warming 1874, pp. 34–5). The linear leaves or tube-leaves are spirally coiled subterranean leaves that lack chlorophyll and resemble roots; these tubes divide into two branches with a bulb-like cavity formed at the point of division.
4
Ernst Gottlieb Steudel’s Nomenclator botanicus (Steudel 1841) listed all known species of plants up to the time of publication (for species of Drosera (sundew), see ibid., p. 531).
5
Utricularia montana is a synonym of U. alpina, a tropical epiphytic species found in alpine regions of northern South America, notable for its large orchid-like flowers.

Manuscript Alterations and Comments

1.1 four] in CD’s hand above del ‘three’
2.2 ornata] interl in CD’s hand

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-9763F,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-9763F