Parramatta1
Oct 21 /70
My dear doctor,
I have ascertained at last that Mr Woof, the gardener of Mr Prince, has a living specimen of the so called Alsophila Cooperi, & I send two fronds of it. Mr Gelding says that he was with Sir D. Cooper & Mr Moore when it was first discovered, & that in his opinion, it is quite distinct from A. Leichardtiana.2 The trunk & leaf stalks, he says, are identical with those of A. excelsa. It has not any thorns, & the only similarity between it & A. Leichardtiana is in the roughness of its pinnae. In fact, he continues, at first sight, one would take it for A. excelsa. It is apparently rare, for during two days wandering in the gullies at Illawarra, they met with it only in one spot about a mile on the Sydney side of Bellambi, where it was obtained chiefly growing on fallen & decaying trunks of Seaforthia. Mr Fitzgerald tells me that Woof exhibited this fern at the Show3 the day before yesterday, & that in his opinion, it is intermediate between A. excelsa & A. australis. The stem, he adds, is woolly."4 From looking at the specimen, it certainly appears to me different from any species that I know.
I am afraid I cannot give you any information respecting the northern Doryanthes, and I believe that the plant figured by Miss Scott is D. excelsa (See Dr Bennett's Wandering of a Naturalist p. 3415). It used to be very abundant at Illawarra. It occurs near George's River & also near Appin (See Dr B's book p. 339), & near the Lower Hawkesbury.6
[…]7
Alsophila australis
Alsophila excelsa
Alsophila Cooperi
Alsophila excelsa
Alsophila Leichardtiana
Doryanthes excelsa
Seaforthia
NSW. All place names mentioned are in NSW.
i.e. A. leichhardtiana.
Spring exhibition of the Horticultural Society of New South Wales. Sydney mail, 22 October 1870, p. 3, mentions Woof's exhibiting a collection of ferns, but does not name all species included.
There is no opening set of quotation marks.
i.e. Bennett's Gatherings of a naturalist (G. Bennett (1860)); the illustration of 'Gigantic lily | (Doranthes excelsa)', lithographed by Walter Fitch, is between pp. 340 and 341, and the plant is discussed on pp. 339-40.
Hawkesbury River, NSW.
An unknown amount of text missing; text ends at the bottom of the page, without valediction.
MS found with a specimen of Cyathea cooperi (MEL 2148770). Though the valediction and signature are missing, the writing matches that in other letters that Woolls wrote to M.
Please cite as “FVM-70-10-21,” 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