25, WILTON PLACE. S.W.
June 3 /73
My dear Sir
I have to thank you for your letter of the 23d March and for a parcel of Orchidaceous specimens per port which came just in time as I yesterday sent off the Hydrocharideae Scitamineae and Orchideae to the printer.1 I had already determined the Epipogum which is the same as the Asiatic E. nutans.2 The Goodyeras are puzzling none of them true Goodyeras though I leave the two in the genus G. viridiflora is certainly the same as Georchis cordata from [Khasia] and probly3 the same as G. viridiflora Blume of which we have no specimen4 — I have been obliged to take the characters of the Scitamineae from the proof slip you sent5 for the box per Hampshire (which arrived safely) only contained the Alpinia coerulea the Musa and the Curcuma which we had already and the box per Somersetshire is not yet arrived
I have sent off by this post five more sheets of the Flora down to p. 208 Three more sheets are in type but the clean copies not yet struck off and this week's proofs will commence Monocotyledons
I trust you will have received safe the box of Orchideae in which was also a copy of the new part of our Genera Plantarum6
I hope that Mr Macleay will bring back better accounts of yourself and your goings-on7 I should much like myself to have paid you a visit but I am far too old to think of it
Yours ever truly
George Bentham
Baron Ferd v. Mueller
I follow Brown in including Apostasieae as a tribe of Orchideae8 Apostasia though anomalous as a whole yet piecemeal has the perianth of Thelymitra the habit of Corymbis the ovary of Selenopodium9 and the stamens of Neuwiedia
I was disappointed in not finding among your Hydrocharideae an (Ottelia?) which we have from Drummond and from the Wendu10 river in Victoria from Roberston like a small slender variety of the common one but with a very thin membranous spatha and the capsule with only very thin small remains of the base of the perianth, our specimens are all in fruit only so that I am not certain of the genus.11 It would be well to search for it in your Victorian waters
Alpinia coerulea
Apostasia
Apostasieae
Corymbis
Curcuma
Epipogum nutans
Georchis cordata
Goodyera viridiflora
Hydrocharideae
Musa
Neuwiedia
Orchideae
Ottelia
Scitamineae
Selenopodium
Thelymitra
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, pp. 255-396.
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 308, where he attributes the name E. guilfoylii to M; although M described the species in B73.03.02, p. 30, he did so without assigning a name.
probably?
For the second species, Bentham retained M's name, G. polygonoides, B73.03.02, p. 29.
B73.03.02, pp. 24-7; see comment in Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 260.
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part 1.
George Macleay had delivered to M a case of deciduous trees from Kew; see M to J. Hooker, 25 March 1873.
Robert Brown (1773-1858); see Wallich (1830-32), vol. 1, pp. 74-75, quoting 'Brown MSS'.
Selenipedium? Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 396 has Selenipodium. See Hooker (1865-1904), vol. 124, text accompanying t. 7573, for comments on the spelling of the genus name.
Wando?
See Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 257, under O.? tenera.
Annotated in pencil at top of letter by M: 'Lilia[s]'.
Please cite as “FVM-73-06-03,” 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