To William Guilfoyle   20 March 1873

Melbourne bot Garden

20/3/73

 

Some time since, dear Mr Guilfoyle, you sent me specimens of a new leafless Orchid Resembling gastrodia,1 which I laid aside for examination for the 6th vol. of the flora2 with some other orchideous plants.

I have now carefully dissected this remarkable plant, and find it to be a new species of the genus Epipogium, the only formerly known species Epipogium Gmelini3 being very sparsely distributed over middle Europe and middle Asia, being as yet known only in one locality in England. I found Epipogium Gmelini in Holstein in 1846, it being in that large Dutchy also only known on one spot.

Your plant I have now described and sent to print as Epipogium Guilfoyli4 and you will be pleasingly now become aware that your honored name thus stands aside with that of the great Siberian scientific traveller,5 who detected Epipogium Gmelini in N. Asia during the last century.

The miseries in my department through the enormous reduction of the votes still continues; but I spent with your friend6 last Sunday evening & trust that finally my affairs will be so far improved again as to allow me to go on with progressive work, both cultural and literary, and that thus I may look with new hopes to the future.

Should you find more plants of Epipogium Guilfoylii, then please secure such as rare treasure. I have just added the genera Goodyera, Georchis, Eulophia and some other orchideous genera to the flora of Australia

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller.

 

Epipogium Gmelini

Epipogium Guilfoyli

Epipogium Guilfoylii

Eulophia

Gastrodia

Georchis

Goodyera

 
1
Resembling gastrodia is a marginal annotation by M with an asterisk to indicate its position.
2
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6..
3
E. gmelinii ?
4
E. guilfoylii ? M may have withdrawn the name before final publication. Under the othographic variant Epipogum nutans , Bentham (1863-78), vol, 6, p. 308, cites a Guilfoyle specimen from theTweed River, NSW, and gives M's E. guilfoylii as a synonym, citing Fragmenta , vol. 8, p. 30. However, the name does not appear on that page, although M does describe, without naming, an 'Epipogii species ' from the Tweed River with Guilfoyle as the collector.
5
S. G. Gmelin.
6
Not identified.

Please cite as “FVM-73-03-20,” 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/73-03-20