To Joseph Hooker   15 May 1867

15/5/67.

 

The fruits of Podocarpus Drouyniana, dear Dr Hooker, may give your garden a new conifer.1 This species is as yet nowhere in cultivation. The fruit of Nuytsia floribunda I have now for the first time ripe.2 I do not doubt it will germinate! The character of 4 cotyledons appears extraordinar, yet we must not value it too highly, until the cotyledons of many Loranths have been counted.3

 

Nuytsia floribunda

 

Fructus tripterus, fragili-coriaceus (haud crustaceus), pollicem latus (alis inclusis), e[a]s Dodonaearum quarun dam simulans; divisiones formam semirenatam praebentes — Semen unicum, acute trigonum — Albumen amygdalcuum haud sulcatum. Embryo rectus, cylindraceus, fere dimidium albuminis aequans, axilis. Cotyledones quaternae, lineari-semicylindricae, circiter 2/3"' longae, radicula vix breviores.4

 
 

Nuytsia floribunda

Podocarpus Drouyniana

1
See also M to [J. Hooker], May 1867 (in this edition as 67-05-00f). M described Podocarpus Drouyniana in B64.02.01, p. 86.
2
M gave the details of the fruit in B68.13.01, p. 252, under Atkinsonia ligustrina , but slightly differently from the description transcribed below.
3
The text ends on the back of the folio, near the top of the page, without valediction. The text that follows here is filed as f. 19 of the guard-book. It may have been sent at a different time, but is included here on the basis of the mention of four cotyledons.
4
N. floribunda was very briefly described in Brown (1831), p. 17. It is described in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, p. 387.

Please cite as “FVM-67-05-15a,” 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/67-05-15a