To Joseph Hooker1    4 October 1876

4/10/76

 

By the Steamship "Durham", dear Dr Hooker, a Gentleman takes a case with living plants to London.2 In this are included for Kew 2 plants of Correa Lawrenciana, the var. with crimson flowers.

I wished your father could have lived to see this glorious plant of his3 in cultivation. You know of course that C. Lawrenciana is almost subalpine, and that it ought to stand on sheltered places the English lowland-winter, if sightly4 protected. It only commences to grow in altitudes where C. speciosa ceases to grow.

It becomes a small tree in forest vallies, and the foliage with its dark green lustre is magnificent, while the flowers of this variety, as yet only known from my place of discovery,5 are as magnificent as that of the scarlet variety of C. speciosa.

Regardfully

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Correa Lawrenciana

Correa speciosa

1
MS annotations: 'J. S' [i.e. John Smith, Curator];and: 'And Jay 11/77'. See J. Hooker to M, 11 January 1877 (in this edition as 77-01-11a).
2
The first sentence is marked in the margin with a double line. See J. Hooker to M, 11 January 1877. The Kew Inwards Book, 1873-77, p. 422, entry 16, dated 9 January 1877 identifies the passenger as 'Wm Bull'.
3
William Hooker named the species in W. Hooker (1834).
4
slightly?
5
Between Apollo Bay and Cape Otway, Vic.; see M to R. Gunn, 12 June 1867.

Please cite as “FVM-76-10-04,” 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 23 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/76-10-04