To George Bentham   25 December 1866

Christmas 1866.

 

I am glad, dear Mr Bentham, to learn that the Yorkshire arrived & thus hope my plants will have reached you in time.1 I am engaged preparing Goodeniaceae & Epacrideae as a first sending for vol IV & they will be despatched by one of the first clippers now. Some delay has arisen through the enormous work for the exhibition & through the necessity of inserting the Drummondian plants into the Monopetaleae before I forward them.2

Cryptostemma calendulaceum has of late unfortunately also made its appearance in N. S. Wales.3

I have now every new plant nearly mentioned in vol II & I from Cape York & many others, which I am just about to describe. 4 new Cordylines, 1 Tetracera different from the one described,4 &c.

I do not look upon a genus as necessarely a group of species & therefore do not object to genera formed of one species only, as long as the genus has clear marks. My opinion is, that a fair equal amount of characters should attached to each genus, whether mono- or poly-typic. In large genera (Senecio & Aster for instance) sections do best.

You will find my Monopetaleae well marked up in most cases & the species since R BR's time doubled. I presume the completion of the Compositae for genera plantarum5 will absorb your time yet for months

Your regardful

Ferd Mueller

 

Aster

Compositae

Cordyline

Cryptostemma calendulaceum

Epacrideae

Goodeniaceae

Monopetaleae

Senecio

Tetracera

1
M sent box 29 on 21 July 1866 (RB MSS M44, Notebook recording despatch of plants for Bentham for Flora australiensis, Library, RBG Melbourne)
2
M received James Drummond's herbarium of his WA collections from Drummond's son early in 1866; see M to G. Bentham, 5 February 1866.
3
The widespread pasture weed ('Capeweed') introduced from South Africa was collected in WA by Preiss (between 1838 and 1842) and recorded in Adelaide by 1841; M collected specimens from several locations around Adelaide in 1848 (Kloot [1983], p. 112). Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 675, does not record it from NSW or Qld.
4
In B66.12.04 M described three new Cordyline species (C. hedychioides, C. manners-suttoniae, C. murchisoniae) , pp. 195-6, and Tetracera daemeliana, p. 191.
5
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83). The Composites, worked up by Bentham, were not published until 1873.

Please cite as “FVM-66-12-25,” 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/66-12-25