Melbourne bot Garden
26/6/63
Dear Professor
I beg to enclose for your carpological collection a few legumina of your beautiful Acacia salicina, so remarkable for its scarlet conduplicate funicle. The very few other Acaciae with scarlet funicular-cords, for instance A Melanoxylon, differ in the manner, in which it surrounds the seed; in A. Melanoxylon it encircles the whole. I have with advantage derived positive characters from the funicles in drawing up the diagnoses of Acacia for the "plants of Victoria"2 A. salicina is the most universally distributed of all species of this land, its range being equally wide over the tropical and extra tropical portion of the continent, it being a desert-species. I have it from the Great Bight, from Swan River itself and from near Sharks Bay,3 from Arnhems Land,4 Gulf of Carpentaria, Central Australia the Murray,5 Burdekin6 &c. Next to it in wide distribution is A. Sentis, equally a desert species, of which the Dromedaries are very fond.
I have ready opportunities through the Concession of the Minister of State for the colonies and the Governor to forward monthly free of charges small consignments to the Colonial Office. So if I can send you any thing, pray command my services. I shall feel always a pride in maintaining a communication with a savant, who was celebrated many years before I was born.
With veneration and gratitude ever your
Ferd Mueller
The A. cyanophylla, first made known by you, is very remarkable for producing long suckers, which generate new plants. This is the only species of which I observed this character
Acacia cyanophylla
Acacia Melanoxylon
Acacia salicina
Acacia Sentis
Please cite as “FVM-63-06-26c,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/63-06-26c