15/9/70
Very gladly, dear Mr Guilfoyle, will I name the Aspidium (Nephrodium) after your worthy father, but the fragments are so crushed that I cannot work out a proper diagnosis from them, or ascertain beyond doubt whether the species is new. When you get to the Tweed,1 you must dry some specimens well laid out between paper & also send the stalk of this fern.
I would gladly give you the striped Cordyline,2 but it is my only specimen, & as it is public property I am responsible for its return.3 I will however send you a plant, whenever I multiplied it.
Pray do not forget the specimen of the Strangea to look at, in Mr Moores collection.4 It is much like a Grevillea in fruit, but the capsule is large and the seeds have a black wing like in Hakea and the wing is loose. The flowers are unknown. The leaves are broadly linear.
I am personally quite poor and so is my Department now. So I could not afford labor and cases and expense of packing more than the few plants, which merely as a mark of attention, I sent to the Sydney Exhibition. I intended to have sent more kinds of Zamias of Natal and particularly my new Alsophila Rebeccae, but could not afford the expense.
your regardful
Ferd. von Mueller
The small fern = Asplenium umbrosum JSm
Alsophila Rebeccae
Aspidium
Asplenium umbrosum
Cordyline
Grevillea
Nephrodium
Strangea
Zamia
Tweed River, NSW.
See M to W. Guilfoyle, September 1870 (in this edition as 70-09-00d).
M exhibited a living Cordyline australis among his non-competitive display at the Metropolitan Intercolonial Exhibition, Sydney, August 1870 (Intercolonial Exhibition (1870), p. 81).
See M to W. Guilfoyle, 23 August 1870.
Please cite as “FVM-70-09-15,” 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