25, WILTON PLACE. S.W.
London
July 11 /73
My dear Sir
I have now finished the Monocotyledons with inferior ovary and your specimens are packed up and will be sent off in a day or two I trust you will receive them all safe.
In the box of Orchideae which I returned I believe before I received the last sheet of your Fragmenta I may have left your Dendrobium bicuphum1 under the name of D bigibbum[.]2 I had described it under the latter name and although I afterwards perceived it was different from this Bot. Mag. plant I had not yet revised the genus finally and forgot to alter the name.3
The box per Somersetshire arrived safe — the Scitamineae were already in type, so I left the descriptions as I had drawn them up from your sheet of Fragmenta which I had received in time
The sixth vol. is now in print to the middle of Orchideae — there had been some delay at Whitsuntide with the printers and they omitted to send me the clean sheets of what is printed off in time for the mail so I must send them by next mail
Dioscorea lucida Br. is evidently a Roxburghia and apparently identical with R. javanica Miq.4
Brown's Calostemma alba,5 and Conostylis breviscapa are both very distinct species — the former I have seen nowhere else, the latter only from Baxter's collection besides Brown's Hypoxis marginata is also only among Brown's
Campynema must go as an exceptionaly hexandrous genus of Irideae of which it has the characteristic centrifugal inflorescence extrorse anthers and divided style — none of them occurring in Amaryllideae of which Hypoxideae are surely no more than a tribe.
I am afraid you will not agree with me in many of my generic and other circumscriptions, but in these matters there is no positive test and every one acts according to his own convictions
Your box exactly held the remainder of the Monocotyledons with inferior ovary. There remain Calectasia & Kingia which I presume you sent by mistake as there is much to come before them. However I hope that all will come in to the 7th vol. which will close the work if I live to work it out
Yours very sincerely
George Bentham
Baron Mueller
Amaryllideae
Calectasia
Calostemma alba
Campynema
Conostylis breviscapa
Dendrobium bicuphum
Dendrobium bigibbum
Dioscorea lucida
Hypoxideae
Hypoxis marginata
Irideae
Kingia
Orchideae
Roxburghia javanica
Scitamineae
Please cite as “FVM-73-07-11,” 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 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/73-07-11