To Joseph Hooker   28 January 1873

Melbourne bot. Garden

28/1/73

 

Herewith, dear Dr Hooker, I beg to send for your or Mr Benthams superior opinion a plant from Central Australia, just brought by Mr Ernest Giles, which may constitute perhaps a new genus of Lineae, turning also somewhat to Stackhousiaceae and the apocarpous Caryophylleae of the ficoid & phytolacceous series. It is the only genus new to Australia, discovered by Mr Giles,1 altho' that brave and able exploring traveller found several new species in the vicinity of the great Salt-lake, Lake Amadeus, discovered by him. His map and a print of his journal2 will be sent to you by the next mail. Should my surmise as to the ordinal position of the genus prove correct, then the diagnosis now sent, may be of use for such supplemental notes to your new important volume of genera as you may again append to it. Meanwhile I shall not publish the manuscript of this plant, as I have not really the leisure and the tranquillity of mind, while my whole future is at stake during this cruel persecution of Mr Edw Wilson's and other people here, to collect my thoughts sufficiently. Indeed I may have overlooked in my search a plant, common in some other part of the globe, and which 25 years ago may have been well known to me in Europe but which since may have passed completely from my memory

Ever regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Lineae

Stackhousiacea

Caryophylleae

 
1
Listed without description as Macgregoria racemosa in B73.04.01, p. 129; see also M to G. Bentham, 28 January 1873.
2
No evidence of the receipt of a map or journal can be found at Kew. For the journal, see Giles (1872). The map is probably Plan shewing the Adelaide and Port Darwin telegraph line issued by the Surveyor General's Office, Adelaide, 1872. The map has the following text below the scale: 'Note: Country shewn between Lat s 23 o and 26 o and Long. 129 o and 135 o is from Mr. Ernest Gile's Explorations 1872.

Please cite as “FVM-73-01-28a,” 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 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/73-01-28a