Edward M. Curr, Esq., Chief Inspector of Stock.
Sir,
In reply to your letter, received this day,1 I have the honor to inform you that the plants just submitted to me as likely to have caused the death of cattle on the You Yangs common are two species of drosera, or sundew herbs (D. Peltata and D. Minziesii2), belonging to a genus well known to possess poisonous qualities, as ascertained by independent observation in various parts of the globe, inasmuch as this genus of plants has a very wide geographical range: nine species occur in our own colony, and these are all minutely described in the first volume of my "Plants of Victoria,"3 and subsequently in the second volume of Bentham's "Flora Australiensis,"4 a work mainly aided by myself in English, while I selected one as a representative species for the first facial5 of the "Educational Collection,"6 recently here issued. All these kinds of plants elaborate and exude an acidulous and acrid sap, so blistering that formerly the sundew herbs were used as epispastick in surgery. It is in the early spring season when these plants are most dangerous, as their tender foliage shrivels when dry summer heat sets in. The roots are, however, perennial; thus, in the instances of D. Peltata and D. Minziesii, producing a small tuber. Hence to cope with such plants it is recommendable that the soil in which they abound should be ploughed and sown with perennial grasses, clover, lucerne, and other fodder plants calculated to suppress by vigorous and lasting growth those noxious sundew herbs, while thus also sufficient nutriment would be afforded on now often overstocked pastures for preventing horses, sheep, and cattle to browse extensively on dangerous weeds for want of better forage.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
(Signed) Fer. Von Mueller.
Melbourne, August 9th, 1874.
Drosera Minziesii
Drosera Peltata
Letter not found.
D. menziesii?
B62.03.03, pp. 54-62, where ten species are described.
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 2, pp. 452–70, where ten species are indicated as being found in Victoria.
fascicle?
Exsiccatae; see Lucas, Maroske and Brown-May (2006), and Maroske (2007).
Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The supposed poisonous herb', Geelong advertiser, 5 October 1883, p. 4 (B83.10.06).
It was prefaced by a letter to the editor from James Riley, Inspector of sheep and stock, Geelong district, in which he said 'As I see in many of the papers various accounts of the Drosera or Sundew Herb, which has killed a number of cattle in the neighborhood of the You Yangs, I enclose you a copy of a report I got in '74, from Dr. Mueller, through the Chief Inspector of Stock.' Accounts of the cattle deaths appeared in the Geelong advertiser during September 1883 and were reprinted in the metropolitan press. Some of these stated that M had been sent a sample of the suspect plant and 'pronounced it to be a deadly poisonous herb' (Geelong advertiser, 25 September 1883, p. 2). However, some correspondents were not convinced that the plant was the cause of the disease occurring at the time; see, for example, letters from Hugh Richmond and William Lugg to the Editor, Geelong advertiser, 29 September 1883, p. 3.
See also M to the Secretary, Shire of Corio, 12 August 1874 (in this edition as 74-08-12a).
Please cite as “FVM-74-08-09a,” 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