Melbourne,
24th August, 1873.
I beg to send you a few supplementary notes to the essay forwarded last week;1 also a few specimens of the elegant Imperata arundinacea, which R. Brown already, in 1810, recorded as Tasmanian,2 without giving the precise locality, but which no one ever collected again except Dr. Story.3
I imagine that so conspicuous and remarkable a plant might easily be recognised by the members of your Society, and that thus, when once their attention is directed to it, they will trace out new localities of this grass. Dr. Story's place of finding is clearly a different one to that on which R. Brown got his specimens.4
Imperata arundinacea
B74.13.05. The text of M's letter was followed by:
The Secretary, after referring to the deep obligation under which the Society felt themselves to the distinguished savant whose letters had just been read, for his great and valuable contributions to the literature of the Flora of Tasmania, proceeded to read the paper already alluded to, entitled "Contributions to the Phytography of Tasmania." — By Baron Ferd. von Mueller, C.M.G., M.D., F.R.S., &c.
R. Brown (1810), p. 204; but Bentham (1863-78), vol. 7, p. 536, comments that there was no Tasmanian plant in his herbarium.
See B74.13.05, p. 67; Storey collected the species at Swanport, Tas.
Brown collected while Investigator was anchored at King Island in Bass Strait, on 22-23 April 1802; see J. Willis & Skewes (1955). When Brown returned to Tasmania in 1804 he did not collect on the east coast north of the Derwent estuary; see Vallance (1990), pp. 80-82. See also R. Brown (2001), chapters 20-22.
Letter not found. The text given here is from Papers and proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, 1873, p. 52 (B74.13.03). See also M to J. Agnew, 9 August 1873.
Please cite as “FVM-73-08-24,” 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