From Ferdinand von Mueller to William Guilfoyle   10 June 1869

10/6/69.

I am glad to announce, dear Mr Guilfoyle, that the highly valuable case full of plants, presented by your worthy father and yourself, and gathered in your rambles over the pacific groups, have quite uninjured arrived,¹ except one plant, which by breakage is hopelessly destroyed. Let me thank you not only for this valuable present, but also for the friendly feelings, which you evince on this occasion again towards me. I will gladly examine all the Dracaenas or Cordylines (as the case may be) whenever the promised flowering portions of the respective plants arrive. I have some few years ago worked up all the Australian species,² so that these now will be doubly interesting to me. If you have seeds left (or rather berries) of any, they will aid me much in drawing up the diagnosis.

For New Caledonian plants it is here far too cold, as we are several degrees further south then Sydney & moreover exposed to the piercing antartic³ breezes. I will however put your New Caledonians into my greenhouse, where already a group of plants from that island exists. If the Nephrolepis should turn out new I will gladly adopt your name for it & give you the diagnosis for publication.⁴ I suppose the Sydney philos. Society publishes papers regularly, into which such notes could be inserted. Our good & learned friend Mr Woolls shall also be duely honored as you very rightly suggested.

With kind regards

Ferd. von Mueller

Grow any Lemnas in your ponds wild at Double Bay⁵

Cordyline

Dracaena

Lemna

Nephrolepis