Melbourne bot Garden
7/1/72
I feel very much indebted to you, dear Mr Guilfoyle, for your kindness of procuring the capsules with seeds of Akania. Now we can finish the description of the genus. Your kindness will be publicly acknowledged.1
Your remarks on the tree are also interesting.
It seems too me improbable that the seeds of the plants, mentioned by you, could for any length of time have been near the surface and maintained vitality. Such seeds as those of Sonchus are too soft and oily to resist decay for long periods, moreover they have no hard shell to protect them from the ingress of moisture. Sonchus seeds would readily be wafted about by the winds on account of their plumy pappus. Commelyna and Solanum seeds may perhaps become scattered through the agency of birds
With best salutation
Ferd. von Mueller
Akania
Commelyna
Solanum
Sonchus
Fruits were requested in M to W. Guilfoyle, 18 March 1872. In neither the original description in Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 1, p. 409, nor in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 1, p 471 is the fruit described. M included details of the fruit capsules and seeds in the extended description of Akania hillii in B75.07.01, p. 89, but no collector was acknowledged. AVH has no record of a specimen supplied by Guilfoyle at MEL, but there are three undated specimens with no collector recorded; two are recorded as having seeds, one with no locality, the other from 'Lismore district' (NSW), about 90 km south of Cudgen, where the Guilfoyle property was based, although no MEL specimens of any species collected by Guilfoyle are mapped to that area by AVH (accessed 9 February 2026).
Please cite as “FVM-72-01-07,” 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