[J. Chester Jervis, Esq., of the Grampians, Victoria, sent a dried specimen of a beautiful star-flowered low myrtle shrub indigenous to that region. [...] The specimen was brought over by Mr. R. Ballantyne, together with a letter touching the shrub from Dr. F. Mueller to Mr. Jervis, which was read.1 Dr. Mueller has named it Scariomyrtus hexamera.2]
Scariomyrtus hexamera
M’s letter could not have been written later than 12 August 1855, when M left Moreton Bay (Brisbane) with the North Australian Exploring Expedition, since he had been out of contact with the settled parts of Australia since then; and it was almost certainly written before he left Melbourne in late June 1855 to join the expedition in Sydney.
In a report on his tour of the Grampians (M to J. Foster. 15 January 1854), M noted the discovery of ‘an extremly beautiful and yet undescribed bush of Myrtaceae (to be named Scariomyrtus hexamera), forming a most singular genus in the series of this order’. The taxon was mentioned with a very brief description, as Scaryomyrtus, in B54.06.01, p. 157.
Letter not found. For the text given here, see the report of the meeting of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 7 January 1857, in Courier (Hobart), 13 January 1857, p. 2.
Please cite as “FVM-55-00-00,” in Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, edited by R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora†, J.H. Voigt† and Monika Wells accessed on