To Joseph Hooker¹    6 September 1869

6/9/69

Let me express my best thanks, dear Dr Hooker, for the liberal sending of Wight's & Falconer's² plants, all of great utility to me for references, whenever the occasions arise. I enclose a few seeds of the splendid Grevillea macrostylis, which is not yet in European cultivation and I beg to send also seeds of Bauhinia Hookeri, fresh obtained from Carpentaria.

The plants pr. "Summersetshire"³ i.e. Verbenaceae & Myoporinae came safely back. Do not think, dear Dr Hooker, that I overvalue my gifts or undervalue those of Kew, but when you look around your industrial Museum, your Herbarium, your Library and your conservatories, you will be conscious, that a great deal was sent by me within the dozen years of my administration. Even the timber specimens of the exhibition came in part originally from my department and even some things were entirely my private gift. Altho' many of my sendings of life plants did succumb on the long voyage, many came also safely; and precisely the same remark also applies to the sendings from Kew. Your venerable & never to be forgotten father acknowledged some spendid⁴ arrivals of Araucarias &c. Your complaint of repeated sendings of the same species of seeds is not just; there was never the same in all but every collection of seeds from any part of the globe arriving here contains duplicates, over and over, and this is but the natural course of events. But, my dear Sir, why not send such duplicates of seeds to South Europe, North Africa or other parts of the world? The seeds sent were always fresh, well dried and well packed (and that is more than what I can say of most sendings I receive) — hence the seeds were valuable for interchanges and the surplus might always without cost have been sent to British Consulats abroad! especially as so few of such plants in Glasshouses ripen seeds & therefore new supplies have to be imported from the native country.⁵ — Besides you must remember, that it is so infinitely more easy to send from an aged establishment, grand like Kew, where even plants of little value are always discarded, valuable to us here, than it is for me from a young place to make sendings of life plants, as the plants of this part of Australia are so difficult to move in a living state. Were I in the tropics, it would be otherwise.

I hope the huge Todea will arrive safely. It wants plenty of water and bottom heat to make it shoot. I ought to have some credit for having first carried the idea to move these huge blocks of ferns into other countries, altho' it might have been done from South Africa 400 years ago.

Are through the British Consul or others no seeds obtainable from Madeira & Teneriffe? I am sure the people there would gladly receive surplus Australian seeds & send us their; the plants of those isles ought to thrive here accordingly.⁶

Always your regardful

Ferd. von Mueller

Araucaria

Bauhinia Hookeri

Grevillea macrostylis

Myoporinae

Todea

Verbenaceae