19/5/69
I have to thank you, dear Dr Hooker, for your sending of a copy of your and Mr Bakers fern catalogue of your cultivated species.2 These are grateful plants mostly and generally, as you know well, of easy culture. Would it be possible for your foreman to send me a good collection of spores, to allow me to raise them?
Your wish concerning the gigantic Todea has been complied with promptly. The stem of the one secured for the Kew fernery is 4'10" high and 3' 2" in diameter and weighs many hundred pounds. I think I shall be able to get it away by the Kent next week, but I am not sure. Hence the bill of loading can be sent by next mail.
I hope your garden people will be liberal in their reciprocity. In candor I must confess, though I do so with the most friendly feelings, that according to the books of my department Kew is deeply in my debt.
The species of Epacris are not easy of culture except E. impressa, which is the only one except E. pulchella near Melbourne.
I will try to send you Xanthorrhoea Australis, the only stembearing species near Melbourne. — The two species of St. Vincent's Gulf are X. quadrangulata and X. semiplana (fragm IV, 1113); of both I made notes as early as 1847, altho' I published them only in 1864.
With best regards
Ferd. von Mueller4
The enormous amount of work during the planting season, when from 60000 to 70000 plants have to be selected for schools, churches & cemeteries, has left me no time to get the few N Z specimens ready, which I intended to forward by this mail.
Are any specimens of Drummonds W.A. Isoetes to spare at Kew? I have now the genus from N.Z!5
In my second set of notes on Tasmanian plants I shall have about 20 new to the island.6
Epacris impressa
Epacris pulchella
Isoetes
Xanthorrhoea Australis
Xanthorrhoea quadrangulata
Xanthorrhoea semiplana
MS annotation: And [Jy] 16/69. The date is in a darker ink, and appears to have been added afterAnd.
Notwithstanding the annotation, Hooker's reply to M's letter would appear to be J. Hooker to M, 11 July 1869; see n. 9 to that letter.
Please cite as “FVM-69-05-19a,” 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 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/69-05-19a