To George Bentham1    July 1866

[July or later 1866]2

 

I was delighted, dear Mr Bentham, to receive the second set of proof sheets of your 3 vol, and I am delighted also with the keenness of your research on the Eucalypti. The character of the anthers will be one of safe guidance. I will examine all the species now 1, concerning embryonic characters, 2, aestivation of stamens; 3, form of seedlings. This character is very good. I have now very many species copiously raised from seeds and find always their form so constant that safely may be relied on their diagnostic value. This shows what may be done in the same direction for other genera. Adventitious branches with aberrant forms of leaves are of course of no avail for discrimination. I shall have a drawing made of every species that comes under my cultivation, while the seedling is about one foot high.3

Melaleuca ericifolia is one of the most common & most gregarious plants throughout all the wet parts of the Victorian territory[.]4 I had just tar, acetic acid & spirits prepared from its wood &c for the exhibition.5

Kunzea Muelleri transgresses the boundaries of Vict by extending over the adjoining alps of N.S. Wales!6 I cannot adopt your view of the purely petaloid nature of the lid of Eucalypti, because E. terminalis, E. Preissiana & one or two more have often no suture at all to separate the operculum from the tube of the calyx. The outer operculum is a mere layer of the calyx-lid. Where a separate membranous interior (not median) operculum exists there it is petaloid or responds to an undeveloped series of stamens. Eucalyptus silvicultrix7 is certainly not referable to E. coriacea, but is closely allied to E. odorata[.]8 I studied the characters of these two trees well in the field. E. coriacea does not leave the moist mountains with prevalent Tasmanian forms.9

The name Euc. confertiflora was given by Kippist.10

Eucalyptus diversicolor is the Karri gum. It is the highest of all and attains 400'!11

You omitted "mica-gum" from the vernacular appellations. it is very graphic.12

The seedling leaves are in more species alternate than opposite!13

Would it not be best to reunite Araliaceae with Umbelliferae? The form the gigantic Kamkschatka umbellates is quite araliaceous, & such forms as Mackinlaya break down the boundary still more.14

Proves the rubiaceous plant, which I named after my teacher in classics Professor Dr Klander distinct from Indian species.15

 

Araliaceae

Eucalyptus confertiflora

Eucalyptus coriacea

Eucalyptus diversicolor

Eucalyptus odorata

Eucalyptus Preissiana

Eucalyptus silvicultrix

Eucalyptus terminalis

Kunzea Muelleri

Mackinlaya

Melaleuca ericifolia

Umbelliferae

1
MS annotation: Vol iii (i.e. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3).
2
July is the earliest date when the first proof sheets upon which M comments could have arrived in Melbourne.
3
In a plate accompanying the text of Eucalyptus cornuta in the Ninth Decade of M's Eucalyptographia, B83.13.07, natural-size lithographs of young seedlings of twenty-seven species are provided; an illustration of the same stage is incorporated in the plate of E. sepulcralis (Eighth Decade, B82.13.17) and illustrations of juvenile leaves are included in many of the plates in each Decade. In the text for E. saligna (Second Decade, B79.13.11), M explains that he is uncertain of the juvenile leaf form, as the ‘observations [of the leaves characteristic of seedlings] commenced by me in the Botanic Garden, came long since to an abrupt close, and could since methodically not yet be resumed.’
4
editorial addition.
5
Intercolonial Exhibition of Australasia, Melbourne, 1866-7; Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867.
6
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 113.
7
M's herbarium name: see Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 201 under E. coriacea.
8
editorial addition.
9
f. 21 ends here.
10
E. confertiflora was described in B58.11.01, p. 96; R. Kippist had prepared the manuscript. See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 254.
11
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 251 gives the height as ‘80 to 100 feet’; in M's description, B63.03.01, pp. 131-2, the height is given as up to 100 feet.
12
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 186.
13
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 185.
14
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 378.
15
Ixora klanderiana was described in B65.04.01, p. 18; see Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 415, where I. klanderiana is treated as a synonym of I. timorensis.

Please cite as “FVM-66-07-00d,” 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 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/66-07-00d