TALBOT3516

Dear Henry

Pray tell me how you find vegetation going on at Lacock – & whether your interesting plants promise well this year – Mattia umbellata Muscari giganteum, Hyacinthus spicatus &c – & any fresh seedlings.

Do you mean to come back to town? I saw a very pretty plant (dry) at M^r Lamberts ¹ a sort of shrubby blue Aphyllanthes with permanent Xeranthemum-like flowers from sand banks in N. Holland. ² Brown ³ remembers it there. Its name I forget.

I have beautiful Rhodods. from Abb^{y 4} & Edwardsia I never saw in such profusion I shall try to encrease them they improve every year.

Have you the Norway maple A. platanoides at Lacock? Mary Talbot ⁵ has sent me a specimen from Llanelay. ⁶

We have better accounts today both of Stavordale ⁷ & the King ⁸ – M^r Feilding ⁹ I am sorry to say seemed very ill when I saw him Saturday but of course you have later accounts. Horatia ¹⁰ is very well.

Sir Grenville Temple’s cone from M^t Atlas appears to be a true Cedar of Lebanon – a very interesting new habitat for a scarce tree. It is curious two such remarkable species as that & Rhod. ponticum should grow at the two ends of the Mediterranean basin & not in the intervening countries. The same was said too of Ornithog. Arabicum & Vaccinium Arctostaphylos but the former has been found in Italy & the latter is now divided into two distinct species one at each end. Who in England has studied the Geography of Plants? I should like to contribute towards it.

Y^r Aff
W F S

London June twelve 1837 W. F. Strangways
H. F. Talbot Esq
Lacock
Chippenham