[In Colonel Mitchell's Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia (1848) is a drawing and a brief reference to a "tree without branches, the leaves of which hang gracefully around the stem, giving it the appearance of the plume of a staff officer, on which account the tree or shrub has been known as the Plume Bush."1 It has been a matter of interest ever since to know what this could be, but the mystery has been recently solved by Baron von Mueller, who writes us that he has just received fruits of the plant from Brisbane, by which he is enabled to identify it as Astrotricha pterocarpa, which is described among the Araliaceae in Bentham's Flora Australiensis, iii. 379.2]
Araliaceae
Astrotricha pterocarpa
Mitchell (1848), p. 219. The illustration from Mitchell is inserted at this point.
Bentham (1863-78).
Letter not found. For the text given here, see Gardeners' chronicle and agricultural gazette., 7 June 1873, p. 775. The letter is dated to mid-April as the latest likely date that it could have been sent to have been included in this issue.
Please cite as “FVM-73-04-00b,” 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