From George Bentham   26 March 1865

25, WILTON PLACE, S.W.

March 26/65

My dear Sir

I write a few lines to acknowledge the receipt of yours of the 9th Jany which came to hand yesterday — with some notes on Cucurbitaceae etc. Dr Hooker has worked up Cucurbitaceae & Passifloreae for the Genera Plantarum¹ and has been in correspondence on the subject with Naudin Dr Hooker has investigated them with great care from dried specimen and Naudin has taken as much pains with those especially which he has been enable² to cultivate at Paris during several years he has devoted to them — so that I hope that altogether I shall have less difficulty with the genera than I had anticipated With regard to the Myrtaceae I get on but slowly on account of the tedious labor of examining such vast numbers of an order comparatively new to me — at least the capsular ones — for I had previously examined a large number of tropical baccate Myrtaceae — Your Chamaelaucieae (all but one parcel) were sent off in a box made up for you at Kew as I mentioned in my last Baeckea Leptospermum and their allies are also ready but I do not send them just yet as I have still some old synonyms — as well as a few of Schauers & Turczaninow's to verify — Indeed among the Chamaelaucieae it is possible that there may still be a name or two to alter

I quite agree with you as to the great multiplication of species of Leptospermum³ but I am much at a loss where to stop with the uniting them for the whole of the genus seems to me to show a gradual passage from the one to the other — and yet I feel it will never do to unite all into one species — I shall give such characters as I can. You will probably consider the forms I admit as species to be mere varieties and other botanists whose views I feel also bound to respect will consider even my varieties as distinct species. I quite agree with you in uniting Fabricia with Leptospermum — I doubt much whether F. myrtifolia Gaertn has winged seeds It is a plant of which I find no specimens from any where but Endeavour Bay Banks and Solander's specimens with flowers and open capsules do not appear to have good seeds and Cunningham's are in the same state. What Gaertner figures as the seed appears to me to be the placenta with the whole mass of seeds perfect and sterile but none of them ripe which in that state are readily detached in one mass shaped exactly as Gaertner represents⁴ Homalospermum again must come in as a species allied to F. laevigata — the perfect seeds are usually if not always winged as in that species. I think Pericalymma must also come in to Leptospermum, it is certainly very near L. erubescens in habit & the ovules are the same only fewer in number — Agonis appears to me a good genus both in habit and its erect ovules. Kunzea as you say has the ovules of Leptospermum but has exerted stamens.

In Metrosideros I am surprised that Australia has no representative of the typical Pacific Island & N. Zealand form of the genus Your M. eucalyptoides belongs to the section of M. vera which forms Miquel's genus Nania but which I think must be kept as a section of Metrosideros M. chrysantha and M. paradoxa on the other hand belong to Brongniart & de Gris's New Caledonian genus Fremya over which your name Xanthostemon has the rights of priority and which I think the alternate leaves and very different placentation will justify us in retaining as a genus.

I have also done Kunzea Eremaea &c and must now attack Callistemon & Melaleuca which appear to me to be a formidable task.

Profr Oliver has been working up Loranthaceae with great care⁵ — but I think they will have to be transferred to the vicinity of Proteaceae.

I am glad to see that you have sent off Umbelliferae etc. — I still think Compositae must come into my 3d vol but there is plenty of time yet for I not see my way quite clearly through Myrtaceae yet — I not see however how they can exceed 600.

Yours very sincerely

George Bentham

Dr F. Mueller

Agonis

Baeckea

Callistemon

Chamaelaucieae

Compositae

Cucurbitaceae

Eremaea

Fabricia laevigata

Fabricia myrtifolia

Fremya

Homalospermum

Kunzea

Leptospermum erubescens

Loranthaceae

Melaleuca

Metrosideros chrysantha

Metrosideros eucalyptoides

Metrosideros paradoxa

Metrosideros vera

Myrtaceae

Nania

Passifloreae

Pericalymma

Proteaceae

Xanthostemon