To Thomas Anderson   15 December 1867

15/12/67

 

I was very glad, dear Prof. Anderson, to receive from the Linnean Society lately your excellent memoir of the Asiatic Acanthaceae.1 With the aid of this exquisite essay I shall be able to fix the position of the few Austral. Acanthaceae, not above a dozen!

My garden is dreadfully poor in this showy plant. I have not even Graptophyllum in cultivation.

Should you, as I hope, work on American Acanthaceae I will gladly send you all mine. I have some from Moritzi and others not even contained in the Kew collection.

Do you find difficulty in raising Acanthaceae from seeds?

I am greatly obliged for your friendly mediation of my communications with Java.2

your very regardful

Ferd Mueller.

 
 

Pray give your excellent brother3 my kind regards

The Acclimation Society introduces no carnivorous or ferocious animals, but any thing like deer, gamebirds &c. We keep up no regular menagerie, as our fund not admits of it. I fear I shall never be able to get a specimen of Casuarius Johnsonii for your Museum the bird being so excessively rare. Indeed only a year ago I named it & made it preliminarely known.4 Museum-birds I can manage to send, & some other smaller contributions5

6Your "Acanthaceae"in the L.S. proceedings have been to me a real boon. I have reduced Earlia to Graptophyllum7 and described 2 new Diclipteras, also 2 or 3 other Acanthaceae.8 The order is however singularly poor in Australia

Would the seeds of Euryale ferax travel? I have ripened seeds of Victoria regia in my tank & the plant has been flowering with scarcely any intermission for 11 months9

I have neither Barclaya &c.

 
 

Acanthaceae

Barclaya

Dicliptera

Earlia

Euryale ferax

Graptophyllum

Victoria regia

 
1
Anderson (1867).
2
See M to T. Anderson, 25 March 1867 and 24 May 1867.
3
Presumably John Anderson.
4
B66.12.02. See also M to R. Murchison, 25 December 1866.
5
M was actively distributing zoological specimens to international museums; see Lucas (2013a). It is not known whether he sent bird specimens to Calcutta.
6
The remainder of the text is on an un-numbered folio after f. 171. It is placed here on the basis of Anderson (1867), which also confirms the addressee, and of M's 1867 descriptions of Acanthaceae, see note 8 below.
7
M had erected Earlia (E. excelsa) in B63.04.01, p. 160, and reduced it to Graptophyllum earlii in B67.12.01, p. 87.
8
M named Dicliptera armata, D. racemifica, Justicia cavernarum, J. eranthemoidesand J. hygrophiloides in B67.12.01.
9
See Maroske (1992).

Please cite as “FVM-67-12-15,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/67-12-15