To Joseph Hooker   27 February 1870

Melb. bot.Garden

27/2/70

 

Let me in first instance, dear Dr Hooker, offer my best gratulation to your long & well deserved honor of the Companionship of the Bath.1 May you long live to enjoy this mark of approbation from the throne.

It will be impossible to send a living Loranthus or viscum, as the sap of a comparatively small movable plant would surely get exhausted by the parasite on the 3 months voyage and both would die. But would it be wise to grow the Loranthus? It is sure to kill anything it is put on.2

I always congratulate the Tasmanians on the absense of Misletoes in their island. You might easily raise them from seed. But why not rather grow the Terrestrial Nuytsia & Atkinsonia? Both can be raised readily from seed! in an ordinary pot ful earth; nor does the seed soon lose its vitality.

I am grateful for the Acorns & other seeds you again so attentively sent

If my Mesembryanthemum tegens is the real M. debile,3 then Sonders quotation of the latter under M. reptans is wrong, as it is yellow flowered[.]4

I hope poor Dr Ward will not turn himself in his coffin, if he hears your new appellation of his cases, however applicable it is.5

Mr O'Shanesy at Rockhampton has a small Nursery of plants.

I have several thousand Cinchonas growing under some slight brush shelter but intend to take them to the Ranges, whenever we are settled calmly down in politics to commence forest culture. In our warm fern-tree vallies they ought to do quite well. They will even stand a slight frost, provided the frost is not combined with cutting winds.

It is strange that Eucalyptus polyanthemus should bear the English winter, since it is a species from the warmer parts of Australia.

Always your regardful

Ferd. von Mueller

 

Atkinsonia

Cinchona

Eucalyptus polyanthemus

Loranthus

Mesembryanthemum debile

Mesembryanthemum reptans

Mesembryanthemum tegens

Nuytsia

Viscum

Hooker was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath on 6 November 1869 (London Gazette, 9 November 1869, p. 5975). See Lucas (2013a) for a discusion of Hooker’s attitude to this and other honours.
See J. Hooker to M, 10 December 1869 (in this edition as 69-12-10a).
See J. Hooker to M, 31 December 1869 (in this edition as 69-12-31b).
M described the flowers of his new M. tegens as 'pallidius roseis' (pale pink) in B66.10.01, p. 157, but in Harvey & Sonder (1859-65), vol. 2, p. 407, M. reptens, under which M. debileis synonomized, is said to have yellow flowers.
See J. Hooker to M, 8 December 1869, in which the topics discussed in the remainder of the letter also appear.

Please cite as “FVM-70-02-27a,” 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 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/70-02-27a