Among the Restiaceae last sent by Mr. Buchanan1 is a female specimen of the tall species peculiar to the Chatham Islands.2 Unexpectedly it shows this plant to belong to, the nucular, not the capsular, series of the genera, among which its dispersion of flowers places it separate from any, except the South African genus Elegia; but, as it differs in various respects from all the specimens of that genus, and as we have no Elegias out of Africa, I have deemed it best to form a separate genus for the Chatham Island plant, and have named this new genus Sporadanthus.3 It holds precisely the same relation to Leptocarpus as Lepyrodia to Restio. Perhaps you will kindly Insert a brief note to this effect in your next volume.
Elegia
Leptocarpus
Lepyrodia
Restiaceae
Restio
Sporadanthus
John Buchanan (1819-1898).
See M to J. Hector, July 1873 (in this edition as 73-07-00a).
See P. Lange et al. (1999) for a discussion of the history of the taxon.
Letter not found. The text given here is from the Proceedings of the Wellington Philosophical Society (Transactions and proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, vol. 6, p. 389 (B74.06.03). The item is dated to December 1873 as the latest likely date that it could have been written and read at the meeting of 6 January 1874. The text is introduced by
Dr. Hector read the following extract from a letter received from Baron von Mueller, relative to a plant from the Chatham Islands, described in "Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiensis," (sic) LXII., p, 79, as Lepyrodia traversii, which further specimens have proved to be a new genus— [See B73.08.01, p. 79].
Please cite as “FVM-73-12-00a,” 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