To George Bentham   22 August 1877

22/8/77.

 

I was pleased, dear Mr Bentham, to get the commencing sheets of vol VII1 and admire the vigorous continuation of the work as a sound foundation for all future observations, if indeed phytographically much should remain to be added.

Reading your notes on the classification of Monocotyledoneae, you must allow me to say, that I merely followed Hasskarl in uniting Kyllingia with Cyperus;2 hence I cannot a priore 3 be held responsible for the union. You may have discovered more valid characteristics than were known before, to circumscribe Kyllingia. You are also not just to me in regard to my interpretation of the floral parts of Gramineae;4 for

1, I did apply only to the inner glumes (glumellas) the term sepals, always distinguishing the outer glumes as bracts, thinking that the two glumellae represented each a solitary remnant of a sepaline whorl.

2, This view I found to be erroneous, after I more closely investigated the Cyperaceae; hence I corrected already in 1874 my views by a note at 282 of vol. VIII of the fragmenta.5 In justice to myself this might have been also mentioned, for as your passage runs it would appear, that I regarded all glumes still as sepals up to the present date.

Regardfully yrs

Ferd. von Mueller

 

Carpha was united by Endlicher (gen. pl.)6 not by me with Chaetospora; this I distinctly stated in the fragm.7

 

Carpha

Chaetospora

Cyperaceae

Cyperus

Gramineae

Kyllingia

Monocotyledoneae

1
Of Bentham (1863-78).
2
Hasskarll (1848), pp. 87-89. Bentham (1863-78), vol. 7, p. 251 wrote ‘F. Mueller proposes to unite [Kyllinga] with Cyperus, to which it is certainly nearly allied, …’. M in B74 11.01, p. 271 had cited Hasskarl’s unification under Cyperus monocephalus.
3
a priori?
4
Bentham had considered the terminology for the flower parts of the grasses in a lecture at the Linnean Society in November 1876, and said ‘In the large familiar order of Gramineae … the terminology adopted by botanists has been very unsettled, and repeatedly modified, since Linnaeus first endeavoured to assimilate the spikelet to a flower with its calyx and corolla. For these terms Jussieu substituted those of glume and calyx; and the latter name appears to be still retained by Baron F. von Mueller and a few others, notwithstanding that the absence of all homology between the so-called sepals in Grasses and those of perfect flowers has been so repeatedly demonstrated’ (Bentham [1877], p. 513).
5
B74.13.01, under Stipa aristiglumis.
6
Endlicher (1836-41), vol. 1, p. 113.
7
B75.02.01, p. 39, under Chaetospora alpina.

Please cite as “FVM-77-08-22,” 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/77-08-22