14/9/65.
Sir George.
Your Excellency all along has evinced such a friendly interest in the promotion of all that is good, as to encourage me to solicit your friendly aid in obtaining for some mediterranean Gardens a gift out of your flora.
I am anxious to decorate the gardens of South Europe and a few other parts of the globe with groves of New Zealand Areca Palms and with our hardy Australian Corypha & Seaforthia. I have a large supply of fresh seeds of the two latter palms secured, but want yet a quantity of fresh well matured Areca seeds from your Islands. If it was possible to secure them through your Excellencys instrumentality I should feel so profoundly obliged, and if any of the New Zealand Garden establishments would secure the supply, I should most gladly reciprocate [with] whatever is here within my reach.2
During the dreadful war period in your Excellencys territory3 the spirit of my horticultural friends has sunk & I really do not know any one to whom I could apply. Were it otherwise I should not have ventured to trifle with your Excellencys time in the manner I have done.
With profound veneration
your
Ferd. Mueller.
Areca
Corypha
Seaforthia
Please cite as “FVM-65-09-14,” 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 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/65-09-14