From George Bentham   26 June 1865

25, WILTON PLACE, S.W.

June 26 /65

My dear Sir

I have just had forwarded from Kew to the Agent to ship for you two boxes containing all your Myrtaceae except Eucalyptus and one small parcel of Barringtonia etc. I trust you will receive them safe they are certainly well soldered up and quite dry without insects.

I have been working hard but the Myrtaceae have proved much more troublesome than I expected from the enormous number I have had to dissect both for the Australian species (which I have now done except Eucalyptus) and for the tropical genera¹ — I now on leaving town send to press the Myrtaceae for Genera Plantarum and I expect to publish the new part with all before Umbelliferae early in autumn Dr Hooker having worked up all the orders except Leguminosae & Myrtaceae which I have done

I had no letter from you last mail and this months is not yet come in — Your circular however about the search for Leichhardt came by last mail. Your exertions in that cause are most laudable and well deserving of every support in Australia. Here however I fear we cannot do much and as far as Mrs Bentham and myself are concerned our means are very limited and we have so many pressing calls upon them in this society that we really have nothing to spare for objects so distant

I shall now be away till the middle of September excepting for about a fortnight at the end of next month. I have been both hard worked and worried during the nine months I have stuck to London and want a change for I am no longer young — I shall however take with me a good deal of the Fl. Austral MS I have to write out and shall have press correcting for Genera — of which we have now the sheets of the new part printed off.

Among the Myrtaceae returned there are still a few names which must not be taken as definitively settled as there are a few old synonyms still to verify — I ascertained one after I packed up your parcels. Smiths Metrosideros floribunda is Angophora intermedia DC — Ventenat's is the one you have described and correctly distinguished from E. Smithii Poir (E. elliptica Sm. S. brachynemum F Muell)² — As it also goes with Eugenia it cannot retain the name of floribunda³ which (with 700 other names) is preengaged I suppose therefore I must call it E. Ventenatii

I have been obliged to suppress nine tenths of O. Berg's⁴ new genera — my great difficulty has been about Eugenia there are two very distinct groups the American Eugenias including Jossinia and two or three Asiatic ones as well as your E. carissoides — and the great mass of Asiatic australian Jambosas and Syzygiums — but there is nothing but inflorescence to characterise them — centripetal in the one centrifugal in the other as pointed out by Grisebach — and that is sometimes ambiguous so on the whole I included all with A. Gray and Wight in Eugenia⁵

Eugenia cannot be distinguished from Myrtus without the fruit and where the fruit has been known numberless species have been wrong referred. Altogether the whole of the baceate Myrteae run closely into each other.

I have been induced to keep up Rhodomyrtus from the fact of the false dissepiments which separate each seed even in the young ovule state. Besides the common Archipelago one I include in it three Australian ones your M. trineura, M. Tozeri and a very remarkable one sent by Hill with the foliage nearly of M. Tozeri but with a long cylindrical almost monileform fruit. I also keep up Rhodamnia and Nelitris

I acknowledged in a previous letter your box of Umbelliferae etc. I have now also access to a copy of your volume of Plates of Victoria plants⁶

Yours very sincerely

George Bentham

F. Mueller

Angophora intermedia

Barringtonia

Eucalyptus

Eugenia carissoides

Eugenia elliptica

Eugenia Smithii

Eugenia Ventenatii

Jambosa

Jossinia

Leguminosae

Nelitris

Metrosideros floribunda

Myrtaceae

Myrteae

Myrtus Tozeri

Myrtus trineura

Rhodamnia

Rhodomyrtus

Syzygium brachynemum

Umbelliferae