To Michael Guilfoyle   15 May 1871

Melbourne bot Garden

15/5/71

 

Let me in first instance express my extreme gratification, dear Mr Guilfoyle, in seeing my name connected with your natural magnificent Park, a honor which I all the more prize as the landscape is so grand on the Tweed and as I have really so little claim on your consideration.1

I have utilized the Strangea and shown that Bentham is wrong in uniting that genus with Grevillea2 and that the W.A. genus Molloya belongs to Strangea also as a second species.3

I hope you will allow a good deal of the best and grandest native vegetation to remain in its pristine state in your Park

Many grateful acknowledgements for your invitation. Some day later in life, if providence spares me, I hope to avail myself of it

The Sarcochilus, sent some time ago, is S. Fitzgeraldi. The Mappa will be M. tanaria. I know it from several parts of QL.

Always your regardful

Ferd von Mueller

 

Grevillea

Mappa tanaria

Molloya

Sarcochilus Fitzgeraldi

Strangea

1
Guilfoyle, appreciative of the interest M was taking in his son William, decided to name an area of the settlement of Cudgen at his plantation on the Tweed River in honour of M. His doing so was never, however, officially registered. See Pescott (1974), p. 52.
2
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 5, p. 453.
3
M treated Molloya as a synonym of Strangea in B71.07.01, p. 131.

Please cite as “FVM-71-05-15,” 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 20 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/71-05-15