To Joseph Hooker   5 February 1866

5/2/66

 

I anticipate, dear Dr Hooker, that you are collecting supplemental notes for your lamented fathers great fern works or for the continuation of his synopsis.1 Possibly the fern I herewith transmit may be new. Would it not be an excellent gift to [a] botanist, if a complete index of names & synonyms was published as an addition to the gen. & spec. filic.?2 Whoever possesses that important work (& no phytographer of any pretension can be without it) would gladly possess such an index. Perhaps it might be combined with a supplement of actually new species. In publishing a list of Australian ferns3 & refering frequently to extra-australian allied species I observe that my collection embraces very many not recorded by Sir William; thus my collection of Moritzis Vene[s]uela ferns is much richer than that at Kew. If you required it at any time I could send those species not recorded (many from Erromango4 on loan to Kew.

You published a note on a genus of Hill Catakidozamia in the Gardeners Chronicle.5 Could you favor me with a few notes on the value of the genus. I have seen neither species, unless it be one of the Cycas & Encephalartos species. I have prepared a diagnosis of Encephalartos Bowenii (Bowenia spectabilis) for the current number of the fragmenta.6 The fruit of the new genus Darlingia will interest you.7 It is 4 seeded, like Knightia.8

 

Bowenia spectabilis

Catakidozamia

Cycas

Darlingia

Encephalartos Bowenii

Knightia

1
W. Hooker & Baker (1868). M expressed concern about the continuation of the Synopsis to Henry Barkly; see H. Barkly to J. Hooker, 17 February 1866, RBG Kew, Directors’ correspondence, vol. 188, f. 114. See also J. Hooker to M, 27 June 1866.
2
W Hooker (1842); W. Hooker (1846-64).
3
B66.02.01, pp. 111-42: 'Filicum in Museao Phytologico Melbournensi asservatarum Australiam continentalem inhabitantium imprimis de earum distributione agens breviarum'.
4
Erromango Island, Vanuatu.
5
Gardeners' chronicle, 25 November 1865, p. 1107.
6
B66.10.01, p. 171.
7
M erected Darlingia (D. spectatissima) in B66.02.02, p. 152.
8
The text ends without valediction, half-way down the page.

Please cite as “FVM-66-02-05a,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/66-02-05a