25, WILTON PLACE. S.W.
Novr 19 /72
My dear Sir
Your box of Orchideae has reached us all safe as well as the separate parcel. I have just finished Coniferae and am now at Cycadeae which will take me another day or two[.]1 I shall finish up the Euphorbiaceae of which I have your supplemental parcels to go through and then the Artocarpeae which I had put off in hopes of getting Bureau's monograph in the Prodromus2 but I fear there is no chance of having it in time[.] I shall therefore go through them and then take to the Orchideae. The Dicotyledons I have for the volume will not I think be above 450 so that the Orchideae will not be enough and I should be obliged by your sending as soon as possible at least all the Monocotyledons with the ovary inferior Irideae Amaryllideae Scitamineae Dioscordeae etc. — and even those may not be enough without the liliaceous group for my volumes contain at least 1200 species[.] I hope to begin printing as soon as ever I have done with the proofs of Genera Plantarum3 which I trust will be early in January — but the checking the references in the proofs of Genera takes up a great deal of time.
A box is being packed for you with Urticeae Coniferae & small Orders returned
I found much blundering in the Nomenclature of Casuarina — Miquel cannot have read Aiton's short characters his vaginis multifidis — septemfidis and quadrifidis4 are clear enough his three species are stricta (quadrivalvis Labill.) equisetifolia and torulosa as you pointed out5 — why Miquel referred stricta to distyla I cannot make out. I have seen Aiton's own specimens.
I am puzzled about your Ephedra arborea6 which is certainly not an Ephedra. The fructification on the specimens is distorted by grubs but it appears to me to be most probably a third species of Calycolpus7 — however it must remain uncertain till specimens in flower or fruit have been received.
I wish you would get us up some paper for the Linnean Society — say on the distribution of genera and species in Australia and their relation to fossil plants there found
Yours very sincerely
George Bentham
Baron F. v. Mueller
Amaryllideae
Artocarpeae
Calycolpus
Casuarina distyla
Casuarina equisetifolia
Casuarina quadrivalvis
Casuarina stricta
Casuarina torulosa
Coniferae
Cycadeae
Dioscordeae
Ephedra arborea
Euphorbiaceae
Irideae
Orchideae
Scitamineae
Urticeae
Please cite as “FVM-72-11-19,” 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/72-11-19