From Joseph Hooker1    1 December 1871

Decr 1 /712

Dear Mueller

Let me congratulate you heartily on your release from the worries and anxieties of your anomalous position,3 & next on the accession of your dignities which though not acknowledged by the laws of this country must be very gratifying to you as testimonies of the appreciation of your countrymen, that are seldom awarded to Aliens.4 I am not at all up, in these matters & scientific men in this country are not fond of letters & orders except when given for direct services to the state we serve. These are however matters of personal feeling.

A thousand thanks my good friend for your kindness & consideration about the Todeas Tree ferns &c which I shall be most thankful for. We were advised the other day of a lot of Tree ferns having arrived from you for us in the Docks, & send a cart for them but found that they were for another party.

I shall ask Booth to send you a box of rare trees with clay round the roots if he thinks they will travel well.5

I do wish that I could figure more of your things but the Gardeners & public here care not a penny for the favorites of their fathers, & my especial pets my Cape & Australian plants. Nothing goes down but Geraniums, Solaneae, & Calceolarias on one hand or foliage plants & orchids on the other. You will see by the Magazine6 how hard I try to introduce a better class of things — but the Magazine itself is mortal it lives by pleasing — the taste of the public — & my constant fear is of its being cut out by mere florists books that sell cent per cent compared to its sale.

The Todea will appear soon in the Magazine.7 I have long since ordered Fitch to draw it, but his hands are tremendously full.

You ask about Cundarango (the latest Shibboleth!) — some say it is a Mikania, but later accounts call it an Apocynacea. Nothing is really known in fact about it.8

Ever sincerely Yr

Jos D Hooker

 

Apocynacea

Calceolaria

Geranium

Mikania

Solaneae

Todea

 
1
See also M to J. Hooker, 6 September 1871, in this edition as 71-09-06a.
2
Letter embossed with emblem of Royal Gardens Kew.
3
See M to J. Hooker, 29 August 1871, in this edition as 71-08-29b.
4
M had been enobled by the King of Württemberg, see J. von Wachter to M, 12 July 1871, and M to von Wächter, 8 October 1871.
5
The large Todea sent by M to Hooker in February 1871 (See M to J. Hooker 9 February 1872, in this edition as 71-02-09b) was sent onwards to John Booth's nursery at Flottbeck, near Hamburg.
6
i.e. Curtis's botanical magazine, of which Hooker was editor.
7
J. Hooker (1872).
8
‘A plant which has lately been greatly vaunted …as a remedy for cancer’, Journal of botany, British and foreign , vol. 10, 1872, p. 63; see also Nature , vol 4, 1871, p. 514, and Destruge (1872). See also M to J. Hooker, 6 September 1871.

Please cite as “FVM-71-12-01a,” 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 25 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/71-12-01a