To George Grey1    14 September 1865

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

 
MS is written 'Ladies' Leichardt (sic) Search Committee' letterhead paper
See also M to G. Grey, 27 November 1865.
Second Maori Wars, 1861-71.

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