To Joseph Hooker1    10 September 1868

10/9/68

 

I was much pleased, dear Dr Hooker, to see among the Cuba Fungi a few of mine from Australia recorded by the Rev Mr Berkeley2 & so one to which he attached my name. Of this I am quite proud, all the more as it occurs also in Brazil, where I collected before I came to Australia, altho' the plants I brought from there were soon subsequently consumed in a conflagration at Adelaide.

I got safely back the big and the small box with Epacrideae. It is always a relief to ones mind to see these treasures safely return from their [dou]ble and long seavoyage.

I have been extremely busy lately in other extrawork, such as the remodellation of the Board for Agriculture3 and the issue of a new gardencatalogue involves.4 The latter will facilitate our interchanges and I trust be sent you by next mail. It is however a sinful waste of time to compile these indices in the absense of a new edition of Steudel5 or a supplement to that work Really all ought to combine, who are administering large gardens, to get somehow or the other a new synonymic written, in order that unnecessary names or even barbarous ones in our gardens could be expunged. I have just established a new genus among Proteaceae, Buckinghamia in honor of the Duke, as Minister for the Colonies6

It differs chiefly from Grevillea in the plurality of seeds. It is a fine tree from Rockingham's Bay. To this fourth new genus of Proteaceae I have to add a fifth, but it is too imperfectly represented in my collection to establish it properly.

In reference to your question concerning the parturition of the natives I send you a letter from a Gentleman, who lived for 30 years among them and has watched closely their habits.7 I never felt attracted to these people myself, though I sympathize with them in their present condition. Thus I know little of their habits and customs from ocular observation.

The plate of the Ipomoea Nil var. in Bot Magazine is very pretty.8 Would not a root of Iris Pseudacorus travel to my Lake here?

Your attached

Ferd von Mueller

Buckinghamia

Epacrideae

Grevillea

Ipomoea Nil

Iris Pseudacorus

Proteaceae

1
MS annotation: 'Ansd Nov 10/68'. Letter not found.
2
Berkeley & Curtis (1869). Trametes mulleriwas named on p. 320, with habitat listed as Victoria River, Australia, Brazil. Several other species were described from Australian specimens, e.g. Peziza ( Discina ) hirneoloides , from Clarence River, the site of several other species listed and a frequent source of M specimens. No collector information is given for any specimen.
3
See M to J. Grant, 27 August 1868.
4
The catalogue was not published, but was apparently ready for printing soon after this letter was written; see notes to M to E. Symons, 19 September 1868 (in this edition as 68-09-19a). It remained unpublished in March 1869 (M to W. Macarthur, 19 March 1869); indeed, no published version has been found. The MS is transcribed in this edition as 68-09-00.
5
The second and final edition of Steudel's Nomenclator botanicus ... was published in 1840-1.
6
Buckinghamia (B. celsissima) was erected in B68.12.02, p. 248. See M To H. Manners-Sutton, 10 September 1868.
7
Neither the letter asking the question nor the ‘letter from a Gentleman” has been found .
8
J. Hooker (1868), t. 5720. 'Pharbitis Nil; var limbata ... The most beautiful plant here figured was raised from seeds collected in North Australia, and sent by Dr Mueller to Kew, where it flowered in a stove in May of the present year...’. See J. Hooker to M, 15 May 1868 (in this edition as 68-05-15b). Pharbitis nil is an 1833 synonym for Ipomoea nil (1797) (APNI).

Please cite as “FVM-68-09-10,” 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/68-09-10