TALBOT9247

Lacock Abbey,
Chippenham.
June 20^th 1867

My Dear Sir

I have sent you a flowering plant as I mentioned I would in my last letter. ¹ I hope it will reach you safely –

Vellozia has a stigma which Martius ² describes as capitato-trilobum, and so it is figured in all his plates. My plant has a simple stigma. The germen is remarkably triangular – I should not call the corolla marcescent ³ (withering), but persistent & indurating – not so, I think in Vellozia, but Martius is not explicit about it.

My plant comes nearest to the Xerophytum of Commerson, ⁴ a native of Madagascar, which has most of its characters and a simple stigma, but it cannot be united with Xerophytum because the seedvessel & seeds of the latter are unknown – Sir James Smith ⁵ in Rees’s Cyclopœdia thinks that Xerophytum comes near to Hypoxis –

If you agree with the generality of Botanists in separating
Ipomœa from Convolvulus
Crinum from amaryllis
Pelargonium from Geranium
&c &c you will I think, admit that there is a much greater difference [illegible deletion] between my plant & Vellozia⁶) –

For in what does the difference consist between Convolvulus and Ipomœa? In the stigma, which is capitate in the latter (see Persoon)⁷ & the same author adds (p. 185) that Ipomœa bracteata ought to be made into a new genus because it has filamenta glabra, and a stigma simply ovate and not either bifid or capitate – Such generic distinctions abound in Botanical authors. They may or may not be judicious, but they are admitted.

You said in your letter that you had made mention of the plant in some publication ⁸. On what occasion was that?

Yours truly
H. F. Talbot

P.S. I enclose Tropæolum polyphyllum – If you have not got it in the garden ⁹ I strongly recommend it. A very hardy perennial.