From Robert Fitzgerald   27 January 1873

Survey Office

27th Jan 73

My Dear Sir,

I send you all the information I can obtain relative to the expenditure in connection with the Botanical Gardens &c, and hope it may be what you require.

Many thanks for your kind offer of assistance, of which I intend to avail myself should the publication of the orchids be carried out – I should much like, if you could spare the time, that you would again have a look at the Hibiscus from the Bowen River I sent you.1 If you saw it growing, I do not think you would for one moment consider it to be H. divaricatus. The points to which I would wish to direct your attention are that it has not “the leaves of any variety of heterophillus”2 or the “flowers of Radiatus”.3 The foliage is thick, leathery, and glaucous and the flower is also thick and very unlike the semi-transparent flowers of H. Radiatus – The petioles are not “short” many of them being six inches long, and the maximum of length of the leaves is not “four inches” but ten inches and eight inches wide. At the swolen junction of the petiole with the leaf there are curious slit glands on the principal veins, that is, three or one according as the leaves are, trilobed or not

I remain Dear Sir

yours truly

Robt D Fitzgerald

 

I believe I have an undescribed Ipomea from the Bowen also but wait till it flowers to send you specimens

 

Hibiscus divaricatus

Hibiscus heterophillus

Hibiscus Radiatus

Ipomea

1
See R. Fitzgerald to M, 2 January 1873 (in this edition as 73-01-02b).
2
heterophyllus?
3
Fitzgerald is drawing attention to features of the description of Hibiscus divaricatus in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 1, p. 212.

Please cite as “FVM-73-01-27a,” 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 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/73-01-27a