To Henry Manners-Sutton   10 September 1868

Melbourne Botan. Garden

10/9/68.

Sir Henry

I venture to submit to your Excellency branchlets of a magnificent tree of the North East Coast of Australia, on which as a token of homage I wished much to bestow the name of his Grace the Duke of Buckingham. Altho' the name of his Grace through a long series of ancestors has been for centuries illustrious in history, my wish to connect the name of the Duke permanently with the vegetation of this continent may yet perhaps receive the consent of his Grace, in as much as it will be thus in science also a lasting record of his Grace's Administration of her Majesty's colonies.1

The genus itself, which I have chosen for this gift of science, may be deemed worthily selected. The tree ranks among the noblest of the jungle-forests of Rockingham's Bay. Its flowers in a fresh state are of the purest white and exquisitely fragrant. Unquestionably I shall find some early means of introducing the Buckinghamia into British Conservatories.

With deep obedience

Ferd. von Mueller

 

His Excellency

The hon. Sir Henry Manners-Sutton K.C.B.,

Governor of Victoria

 

Buckinghamia

1
For a copy of this letter see H. Manners-Sutton to the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, 5 October 1868 (National Archives, London, CO 309/88, Victoria, Original correspondence, Despatches June-December 1868, ff. 457-8, Enclosure to despatch no. 144, 5 October 1868). The despatch was answered by a despatch to Manners-Sutton (108 of 4 December 1869, ff. 456-7) instructing him to inform M that the Duke had 'no objection to his name being given to a tree' and to convey thanks for the specimen. This was done in H. C. Manners-Sutton to M, 29 January 1869. Buckinghamiawas erected in B68.12.02, p. 247.

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