To George Bentham   September 1870

[ September1870]1

 

p.2

259.

Scleranthus mniaroides extends to Mount Kos[z]iusco in N.S. Wales.3

260.

Scleranthus pungens occurs in the desert on the Murray within N. S. Wales territory.4

263.

Rumex crispus and the other introduced species are wanting a star.5 They are all common in many localities now.

264.

Rumex Brownii one of the most common of all S. Australian and Victorian plants6

265

Rumex Bidens common in many places of Victoria & S. Australia, also N.S. Wales on the Murray river7

268.

Polygonum strigosum grows on the Upper Murray River in N.S. Wales & Victoria, also throughout Gippsland. It was impossible to gather specimens of such a common plant from its many localities.8

268

Polygonum prostratum Common on the Murray River in N.S. W. & Victoria.9

269

Polygonum minus Common in N.S. Wales, Victoria and S. Australia in many parts10

272.

Muhlenbeckia should be written Muehlenbeckia, in honor of Dr H.G. Muehlenbeck of Muehlhousen in Alsatia, where he largely added to the cryptogamic plants known from there.11

276.

Muehlenbeckia Cunninghami on most of the desert swamps and often in vast abundance in the interior. Hence the appellati[ve] of Polygonum swamps, given to all these inundated places by the explorers. The species stands closely to M. ephedroides from N. Z.12

279.

Pisonia aculeata. My exposition of the three Australian species, P. aculeata, P. inermis, P. excelsa in the Fragmenta (vi, 197-198) is overlooked.13

285

Daphnandra micrantha. The fruit is fully described in a note appended to my plants of Victoria p 220.14

286.

Mollinedia Ruiz is by misprint rendered Ring.

288.

Kibara. I cannot believe that we have four really distinct species15

310

Cassytha glabella grows in many parts of South Austr & Vict so also Cassytha pubescens.16

Among Proteaceae I miss the genera Molloya and Strangea in the general table.17 The former is to me not more known that it was to Meissner,18 but Strangea seems in my opinion very distinct as regards its fruits. Ba[i]llon in his histoire de plants19 does not allude to Strangea. Dryandra I regard only as a subgenus of Banksia, there being no more difference in the inflorescence than in Isopogon.20

p. 284

Atherosperma moschata has been found recently by Mr [C S] Walter at Cape Howe within the territory of N.S. Wales.21

p. 292

Piptocalyx may be menispermaceous.22

p. 302.

Endiandra virens is described fragm. II, 90.23

I had not Molina's work for reference to Peumus. Meissner ought to have quoted it not so absolutely.24

I anticipate that Brogniarts25 new proteaceous genus from N. Caledonia26 has dissolved itself in Helicia & so others in likewise formerly known genera.

How unfortunate the disruption of the Curvembryoneae is, appears very striking by the isolation of the Paronychieae.27 We can have no truely natural system, so long as the chaotic mass of Monochlamydeae remains together. With Alex Braun & others I have always advocated the distribution of the Monochlamydeae, except Coniferae & some allied orders, among the other Dicotyledonar plants28

 

Atherosperma moschata

Banksia

Cassytha glabella

Cassytha pubescens

Coniferae

Curvembryoneae

Daphnandra micrantha

Dryandra

Endiandra virens

Helicia

Isopogon

Kibara

Mollinedia

Molloya

Monochlamydeae

Muehlenbeckia Cunninghami

Muehlenbeckia ephedroides

Muhlenbeckia

Paronychieae

Peumus

Piptocalyx

Pisonia aculeata

Pisonia excelsa

Pisonia inermis

Polygonum minus

Polygonum prostratum

Polygonum strigosum

Proteaceae

Rumex Bidens

Rumex Brownii

Rumex crispus

Scleranthus mniaroides

Scleranthus pungens

Strangea

 
 
editorial addition.The species being commented upon are published in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 5. The pages commented upon were sent in June 1870 (G. Bentham to M, 9 June 1870). M could not have received them until August. These comments are almost certainly those sent with M to G. Bentham, 6 September 1870.
p. written by M at the top of f. 28, above the list of page numbers to which he makes reference. MS annotation:'vol. v', and in another hand: 'Scleranthus mniaroides'.
Bentham gave specific localities for Vic but not NSW.
Bentham did not have any locality record for NSW.
Naturalised species were indicated by an asterisk in Flora australiensis. In his comments Bentham implied that Rumex crispus, R. conglomeratus, and R. pulcher were probably naturalized European species; only R acetosella was given an asterisk.
Bentham gave specific localities for Vic and SA; for NSW he cites Leichhardt for ' Newcastle everywhere where sheep have been'.
Bentham did not give a locality record for NSW but gave specific localities for Vic and SA.
Bentham gave only 'Ovens and Plenty rivers' as Victorian locality records; the Upper Marray was not included as a locality for NSW.
Bentham gave the Murray River as a locality for Vic but not for NSW.
Bentham gave four locality records for Vic and three for SA.
Muehlenbeckia is the spelling under which this genus was later conserved under the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.
Bentham's locality records are both specific, e.g. 'Dombey Bay, Wilhelmi' in SA, and general, such as, for SA, 'Murray river to St Vincent's Gulf, F. Mueller'and for NSW, 'Murray and Darling rivers to the Barrier Range, Victorian[i.e, Burke and Wills] and other Expeditions'.
B68.06.03 was not cited as part of the secondary literature by Bentham, who also omitted Pisonia excelsa from direct treatment or in the synonomy of the three species, although he commented that 'the synonomy ... remains exceedingly confused, and the specimens now in our herbaria are wholly insufficient to clear it up'.
Bentham's description did not include details of the fruit; in the 'additions' to B62.03.03, p. 220, under the heading Atherosperma moschatum, M provided an account of the fruit. Bentham did not include this reference in his citations of the secondary literature.
Bentham had noted that M considered all of the species Bentham recognised as varieties of Kibara macrophylla.
Bentham's locality record for Cassytha glabella gives only one specific locality for SA, 'Kangaroo Island, Seeley’, and a series of specific localities for Vic. For C. pubescens, the South Australian record is general, 'from the Murray to St. Vincent's Gulf, F. Mueller', with a series of specific localities for Victoria.
i.e. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 5, pp. 316-8. M would not have had, at the stage he made these comments, the sheets containing Bentham's view of Strangea which he regarded 'as far as the characters are derived from the fruit and foliage, the only parts known, ... to be ... inseperable from G[revillea] cynanchicarpa' (p. 453). Bentham also regarded Molloya cynanchicarpa as a synonym of G. cynanchicarpa, and gave his reasons for rejecting the proposal that the plant be treated as generically distinct (p. 454).
Meisner (1856/7), p. 348, 'genus non satis notum'.
Baillon (1867-95) treats Proteaceae in vol. 2, pp. 385-428.
M would not, when he wrote these comments, have seen Bentham's basis for separating Dyandra from Banksia (p. 563) or Isopogon from Petrophila (p. 336).
Bentham did not have any locality record for NSW.
Bentham stated that he could not 'trace any closer connection with any other Order than that which it evidently bears to Monimiaceae'.
Bentham gave the specific name as 'E. virens, F. Muell,; Meissn in DC Prod.xv, i, 509'. SInce he did not cite the source of M's description, he presumably took it to be an herbarium or manuscript name used by Meissner.
Bentham, p. 295 wrote 'F. Mueller, Fragm. v. 170, observes that the generic name of Cryptocarya must give way to the older name of Peumusestablished by Molina in his Natural History of Chile; but if he had turned to that work, he would have at once seen why the so-called genera there proposed are in most cases inadmissible. Molina gives no generic character, and in the present instance, under the name of Peumus he includes three or four species belonging to at least three genera and two natural orders.' Meissner (1864), p. 67, cites Molina for Peumus, which he treats as a synonym of Boldu. See Molina (1782), p. 185.
Brongniart?
Kermadecia (Brongniart & Gris [1863a], p. 228). M had not at this stage seen Bentham's discussion of this genus, p. 417.
As Paronychiaceae, in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 5, pp 258-60.
M viewed the Monochlamydeae, a grouping of families in which the perianth is apparently single or wanting, as an unnatural group. See B62.03.03, p. 214, which Bentham cites (p. 259), for a brief comment. See also Maroske (2006).

Please cite as “FVM-70-09-00,” 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/70-09-00