To George Bentham   15 July 1873

Melbourne bot Museum

15/7/73

 

I have to thank you, dear and venerable Sir, for some new proof-sheets of the new volume,1 and it is gratifying to see the work proceed so well. From the enclosed memorandum you will see, how I have placed the Comelyneae, on which I have written for the 62 Fragm. That fascicle will contain also the Restiaceae, which have been much overrated by RBr Nees and Steudel.2

While Dr Masters made out about 150 good species of Restiaceae for S. Africa,3 I do not think we can admit more than 50 in all Australia, ¾ of these belonging to S.W. Australia.4

I hope to finish all Glumaceae by Christmas. That will save you an enormous amount of labor for the 7th vol then. I have also from Dulau already obtained a copy of the new vol. of the Genera, a glorious additional ornament to the pillar of your and Dr Hookers fame.5 In regard to Compositae you will perhaps allow me to remark, that Petrobium cannot have antecedence to Forsters Laxmannia, so far as I can see. RBr. suppressed Forsters genus erroneously and before he established his Petrobium had reoccupied the name Laxmannia But that does not invalidate Forsters just and clear priority.6 Eupatorium is also truly Australian.7 Phylopappus was established by Walpers.8 I never adopted or used the name, altho' it was taken up by Dr Sonder.

One of the Queensland Brachycomes has rays of the purest and richest yellow imaginable and always so. I saw that myself in 1856 on Peak Downs.9 These exceptional cases do occur, as for instance in an opposite way through Senecio elegans. The arrangement of the Compositae is now clear and excellent and must have entailed an enormous amount of work. It will now be easy for all of us, to deal with any Compositae

In Phyllanthus of vol. VI I would advise some changes. Phyllanthus Adami should be changed to P. stenocladus.10 My Geneve namesake gave the specific name, devoid of all meaning. It grows on M'Adams Range, so named (rather absurdly) by Capt Stokes, because that range (as seen by myself) is densely strewn with small sharp stones, reminding one of an unfinished Macadamized road, but surely that was a poor reason for the bestowal of the name on the range, and a still poorer for the name of the plant.

The appellation of Phyllanthus Novae Hollandae is still more objectionable in a genus, which is so richly represented in this part of the globe. Fortunately we have already the name Phyllanthus uberiflorus to substitute for it.11

P. lacunarius, P. Fuenrohrii & P. trachyspermus are all inmates of Victoria. You may consider it a safe rule, to give S. Austr, Vict. & N.S. Wales for all plants, recorded from the Murray desert.12

In former years, when it was so difficult to travel there, I did not burden myself anew with specimens in the different colonial territories, if once the species were collected somewhere. The Murray River is but a narrow one, and only a political and a geographic not a natural boundary, just as a plant, which grows on the Tweed in England is sure to be found also on the opposite side in Scotland.

I have missed in your generic key of Euphorbiaceae the genus Bischoffia, atho' I have sent you Bischoffia Javanii from Q. L. I thought also that I had sent you from Q L. a species of Blume's genus Aporosa.13 Both Planchon and myself found occasionally more than one flower within the same calycine integument of Bertya and I have given a figure of such in my lithograms.14 Accordingly Planchon considered (and probably rightly) the supposed calyx as an involucre. In such a case the very allied genus of Ricinocarpus has an involucre and the corolla becomes a calyx, notwithstanding its resemblance to that of Malvaceae.

Your ever regardful

Ferd von Mueller

 

At the whole the genera of Compositae seem still too numerous15

 

16 p. 2. Pimelea longifolia is not a mountain species.

P. 31. Pimelea curvifolia is common in Vict. & S. Austr.

P. 33. Pimelea phylicoides occurs in N.S.W. on the Murray River

p. 56. Poranthera corymbosa is also a spec of Victoria, occuring in E. Gippsland

p. 64. Beyeria viscosa occurs in many parts of Victoria.

I had no leisure as yet to go through the pages carefully.

 

17 The genus Neoroepera was clearly defined by me as Roepera, and Dr Müller of Argau with my consent changed the name to NeoRoepera, so that I am not without claims on the authorship of that genus.18 The change is a fortunate one, because Dr Eichler of Kiel has in the Regensburg Flora-Zeitung brought my Capparideous genus Roepera again to honor from a single specimen I had left and could give him for further researches on Capparideae.19 I met Roeper personally in 1846. He resides in Rostock, my birthplace.

Is there any objection to call the paleae of Compositae simply bracteolae, or do you think, that they do not stand sufficiently regularly for that term.20 Amperea spartioides abounds in Victoria. "Corner inlet" is part of Wilson's promontory in Victoria. I suppose all your Australian Sieberas must now become Fischeras.21 I trust the Hampshire will at last have come safely with the Haemodoraceae &c22

Let me hope you are well and strong again. May you live in your glory to an Humboldtian age.

 

Is Taraxacum as a species defined by Haller? if so, how does he call it. Weber in Wiggers primit flor Holsat (of which rare work I possess a copy) named i[t] as a genus & species well in 1780.23

 
 
 

Amperea spartioides

Aporosa

Bertya

Beyeria viscosa

Bischoffia Javanii

Brachycome

Capparideae

Comelyneae

Compositae

Compositae

Eupatorium

Euphorbiaceae

Fischera

Glumaceae

Haemodoraceae

Laxmannia

Malvaceae

Neoroepera

Petrobium

Phyllanthus Adami

Phyllanthus Fuenrohrii

Phyllanthus lacunarius

Phyllanthus Novae Hollandae

Phyllanthus stenocladus

Phyllanthus trachyspermus

Phyllanthus uberiflorus

Phylopappus

Pimelea curvifolia

Pimelea longifolia

Pimelea phylicoides

Poranthera corymbosa

Restiaceae

Ricinocarpus

Roepera

Senecio elegans

Siebera

Taraxacum

1
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6. Proof-sheets were sent in the April mail (G. Bentham to M, 8 April 1873) with others following soon afterwards (G. Bentham to M, 15 May 1873 [in this edition as 73-05-15a]).
2
B73.08.01, p. 59-64 and 64-101 respectively; the 'enclosed memorandum' has not been found. See also Brown (1810), pp. 243-57; Nees (1846), pp. 56-69, and Steudel (1853-5), pp. 246-66.
3
Masters (1867).
4
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 7, pp. 208-46, recognized 70 species.
5
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), of which vol. 2, part 1 was published in April 1873 (TL2).
6
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 356 placed Forster’s Laxmannia as a synonym of Brown’s Petrobium.
7
Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 245 described the genus as missing from Australia and Africa.
8
Bentham & Hooker (1862–83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 507, give M instead of Walpers (1840), p. 507 as the author of Phyllopapus.
9
Bentham & Hooker (1862–83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 264, comment on the colour of the flowers as ‘v. rarissime flavicantes?’.
10
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 98 treated P. stenocladus as a synonym of P. adami. Both were named by J. Müller in the same publication, one from a female plant, the other from a male of what Bentham considered to be the same species.
11
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 101.
12
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, pp. 107-8 listed these species as occurring in NSW but did not include Vic in the locality list.
13
Bischofia javanica? Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, pp. 41-4. Bentham claimed that he had not received these genera from M (G. Bentham to M, 24 September 1873); see also B74.03.01, p. 141.
14
B65.02.06, plate 20.
15
PS written in margin.
16
The following fragment of text is filed at RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Australia, Mueller, 1858-70, f. 42, annotated in an unknown hand 'vol VI', i.e. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6. It is placed here because the comments are on habitat or distribution data given in the first five proof sheets (80 pages) of the volume, which, in his letter to M of 8 April 1873, Bentham announced were sent in that mail. They would have arrived after M was told that his position as the Director of the Botanic Garden was to be abolished (C. Hodgkinson to M, 31 May 1873) and that he would have to vacate before 1 July the house he occupied in the Botanic Garden (see Cohn & Maroske [1996]). It is probable that the notes were included here, the earliest known letter to Bentham dated after the arrival of the first proof sheets, a probability strengthened by the comments made on the second tranche of proof sheets that appear in the letter, see notes 11-13 above.
17
The following text is filed at RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Australia, Mueller, 1858-70, f. 30. It is placed here since it contains comments on genera included in sheets G to I of Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, i.e. pp. 81-128, sent to press in April but not available then to transmit to M, although they were sent soon after (see G. Bentham to M, 8 April 1873 and 15 May 1873 (in this edition as 73-05-15a). M also comments on Bentham & Hooker (1862-84), vol. 2, part 1, also received by July, see M to J Hooker, 14 July 1873 (in this edition as 73-07-14b). M responds to the comment in G. Bentham to M, 15 May 1873 that Hampshire had not arrived. July 1873 is the earliest this fragment could have been written.
18
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 116, attributes the euphorbiaceous genus to 'Mull.Arg'; APNI cites the authors as 'Mull.Arg. & F.Muell.'
19
M erected Roeperia (R. cleomoides) in B57.13.01, p. 15. In his paper on floral structure, Eichler (1865) included a section on Capparidaceae, pp. 545-58, but no entry on Roepera has been identified here or in other papers by him in Flora up to July 1873. In B75.12.01, p. 174, M wrote that it had been restored to its generic position in Eichler's monograph (See Eichler (1875-78), vol. 2, pp. 207, 208 (fn), 211.
20
See Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part I, p. 163.
21
In Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part 1, p. 464, Gay's 1827 Siebera was recognized as a genus in Compositeae, predating Reichenbach's 1828 Sieberia in Euphorbiaceae used in Bentham (1863-78), vol .3, pp. 351-7, where Bentham had treated Fischera as a partial synonym.
22
The case sent per Hampshire (see fn. 17, above) included the Haemodoraceae (Notebook recording despatch of plants for Flora Australiensis, RB, MSS M44, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne).
23
See Bentham & Hooker (1862-83), vol. 2, part1, p. 522. See also Haller (1742), vol. 1, p. 739, and Wiggers (1780), p. 56.

Please cite as “FVM-73-07-15a,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/73-07-15a