Acclimatisation Society's Office,
30, Swanston Street.
Melbourne, 25 July 1864
My dear Dr Hooker.
I send you herewith some proof of the print of the Chatham Islands plants.1 The work has been finished up to Monochlamydeae & I hope the whole inclusive of ferns & exclusive of the lower Cryptogamae will be sent by next mail. That I reduce Veronica salicifolia & V. elliptica with two of their allies as varieties to one species, for which I adopt the name V. Forsteri & that I have united all Epilobia & carried out other similar reductions is not the result of chimera or silliness but of a most conscientious & patient investigation of very extensive material in my large New Zealand collection. The two Coprosmae I have not named though they may be new; at least I have failed to identify them. Mr Travers did not send flowers or fruit of them.
Mr Moore-[Esmeades]2 who might send seeds of Italian trees & shrubs 3 request for seeds shall be attended to as soon as I have leisure.
By this mail you receive a good collection for Kew Gardens.
I hope you will not forget my garden also; especially as you have it in your power to let me participate in so many of your easily multiplied plants. In orchids & Gesneriaceous plants I am poor here & comparatively also in Cacti & other succulents.
I have sent a good deel of seed to Palermo & Turin before & largely to Algeria.
How is it that so few of my new Acaciae &c distributed from here seem to have grown at Kew?
Will you kindly send me throught the Colonial Office the 1 vol of your N.Z. manual,4 also Harveys & Sonders second vol.5 The latter I should have been glad to have consulted in reference to some Calyciflorae, but it will now be too late I fear.
Allow me to mention that the genus Celmisia is of mythologic derivation & for this reason D.C. chooses Alciope as a name for an allied genus, though it would have been better if the case had been reversed
With best wishes
Ferd Mueller.
Acacia
Alciope
Calyciflorae
Celmisia
Coprosma
Cryptogamae
Epilobium
Monochlamydeae
Veronica elliptica
Veronica Forsteri
Please cite as “FVM-64-07-25b,” 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 30 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/64-07-25b