To William Hooker   25 August 1864

25/8/64.

My very dear & venerable Sir William.

The roughly dried specimen of Lomaria discolor with doubly pinnatifid fronds herewith sent may interest you, though it is but a play-form. I have one large plant of it in cultivation; all its fronds are barren & bipinnatifid; but they suffered in the transit of the plant from the Dandenong Ranges. As soon as the plant produces new fronds I will send better dried ones. The Asplenium, which I temporarelynamed notabile, from East Australia may perhaps not be new altho' it is so to me.¹

The receipt of your letters always so full of genuine kindness & sympathy, gives me on all occasions extreme pleasure, and so it was with your friendly lines of 18 June. I only fear that writing to correspondents must often become very burdensome to you in addition to writing for publications. It is marvellous to contemplate your unparalleled amount of literary productions, forming as they do a library in themselfes. Your synopsis filicum² will be a blessed book toevery one who cherishes a love for plants, & every true disciple of science should feel it a duty to place at your command any additional material he may happen to possess. To you I am again obliged for a generous contribution of plants for the Greenhouses, as indicated by the transmission of a bill of loading and shall not fail to recognize the gift adequately in my forthcoming annual report;³ trusting that they will not come in the sad plight of one of the Boxes with Leguminosae recently returned pr Sussex by Mr Bentham.⁴

My collection of New Zealand ferns is very extensive & I may say instructive; but I suppose it would be needless to send it to you for inspection, since your material must be ample from there. Am I right in my memory if I think that I have furnished you with notes on the range of the species of ferns of this Continent.?— e.g. Platyzoma (which I have called Gleichenia platyzoma) in my Chatham work — Lomaria discolor, (the most common species in the Colony of South Australia). If I did not send such notes, they might be acceptable; for in your larger work you had only an opportunity of quoting in some instances a few localities from specimens, whilst the species in some instances have an universal range or nearly so through wide tracts of country.

With most affectionate regard your

Ferd Mueller

The collection of N.Z. ferns in our Museum here is consisting of 12 large fascicles. The Chathamian ferns will furnish some new habitats & I shall have done them by next mail, so that you may be able to quote them from my printing as well as from Mr Travers's collection.⁵

Gleichenia platyzoma

Leguminosae

Lomaria discolor

Platyzoma