25 WILTON PLACE, S.W.
London Augt 23/64
My dear Sir,
Having been holiday making the last month in the Channel Islands with Mrs Bentham the printing of the 2d vol1 has not gone on quite so quick although I had the proofs sent down to me. You will have received however 25 sheets down to p. 400 that is 8 sheets by the June mail 11 by the July mail and 6 by that of the present month and 4 more are now printing off — there remain little more than two for the present volume which will not be quite so thick as I intended in order not to break into Myrtaceae but I shall make it up by two or three additional sheets to the third vol. I hope to send you the whole of the present vol. by next mail, but I have been obliged to come up to town for a few days to finish up Halorageae for which the printer is waiting and the index is always long printing especially as I shall be again in the country the whole of September. As soon as I return to town for good at Michaelmas my intention is first to go through your supplemental Thalamiflorae so as to return them with the Calycifloral orders contained in the 2d vol then to finish up Caesalpinieae for Genera Plantarum2 and then do Myrtaceae both for Genera and for Flora Australiensis. This will take me the whole winter and it will not be till spring that I shall want the remaining Calyciflorae and the Gamopetalae with inferior ovaries including Compositae which I must get into the 3d vol, though I doubt whether Campanulaceae (Lobeliaceae) Goodeniaceae etc will. I reserve Euphorbiaceae for Monochlamydeae. Your namesake of Argau who is at Kew at this moment has almost finished that order for the Prodromus and it will be very well done.3
On coming to town I found your letter of the […]4 May and some specimens chiefly of Acacias. That genus is already printed off but the species sent had been already entered from nearly the same stations[.]5 Your A. lasiosperma is A. suberosa A. Cunn. I was just reading the revise for press and inserted Dr Martin's station,6 the other Acacia from the Glenelg7 pr Martin is A. tumida which was already gone to press — amongst the Rockhampton ones the only interesting one was one with a linear terete pod which I believe to be the one which I had described as A. leptostachya but left doubtful as to affinity — if I now rightly match it, it belongs as I suspected to the oblique-seeded set of Juliflorae — the sheet containing it was already printed off.
Amongst the two or three other Leguminosae the only one I had not before is the one you have marked Pongamia? — this is as far as I can tell from the fruit and foliage Dalbergia monosperma, a species so widely diffused in India & the Archipelago that I am not surprised to see it in Australia.
The Haloragis from Nepean river is the form of H. alata without angles to the fruit. Both in New Zealand and in Juan Fernandez their angles or wings are very variable sometimes broad sometimes scarcely prominent even on the same specimen and we have specimens from both localities without any angles at all. The species is a very distinct one with the leaves nearly of H. serra (several of your specimens marked H. serra from Beckler &c belong to it) but remarkably petiolate and the pistil 4-merous8 which in H. serra is always 2-merous as in H. digyna. Your H. odontocarpa only differs from H. alata in the excrescences on the fruit which I am not certain of being normal, however I retain it as a species for the present. So again your H. acutangula, although I keep it up, may prove to be only a variety of the common desert one which you have named sometimes H. glauca and placed into the same cover as those you considered as H. serra. I have not fully worked out this species but if it is to be kept distinct from H. ceratophylla it must take one of your former names which I find in Hooker's & Sonder's herbaria (H. muricata)[.]9 H. glauca Lindl, is closely allied to if not a variety of H. serra and like it is always digynous
Just received yours of 23d June10 with many thanks
Ever yours sincerely
George Bentham
Dr F. Mueller
Acacia leptostachya
Acacia tumida
Acacia series Juliflorae
Caesalpinieae
Calyciflorae
Campanulaceae
Compositae
Dalbergia monosperma
Euphorbiaceae
Gamopetalae
Goodeniaceae
Halorageae
Haloragis acutangula
Haloragis alata
Haloragis ceratophylla
Haloragis digyna
Haloragis glauca
Haloragis muricata
Haloragis odontocarpa
Haloragis serra
Leguminosae
Lobeliaceae
Monochlamydeae
Pongamia
Thalamiflorae
Please cite as “FVM-64-08-23,” 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 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/64-08-23