Education Office,
Dunedin,
June 10th 1878
My Dear Baron,
A few days after Easter I went and gathered Donatia in fruit for you. I fear I was rather early as the seeds are scarcely ripe. I have examined a good many but I have found it most difficult to get satisfactory sections, owing to the smallness of the seeds. As you are better acquainted with the manipulation of such minute objects I trust you will make sense of them. So far as my observations have gone they entirely confirm your suspicion that Donatia is a Stylideous plant. In one beautiful section I made the embryo was manifestly at the bottom of the albumen & of small size. I saw no trace any where of an elongated embryo passing up the axis of the seed. If I had succeeded better in making sections I would have taken full notes of my work, but my ill success frightened me. Can you give the specific names of the enclosed grasses & Cyperaceae? In one or two cases I am not even sure of the genera. I send another plant I got at Stewart Island, whose Nat. order I have not even made out. I have descriptions of all of them more or less complete but I shall not trouble you with them unless they should prove new. No. 1. may be a Streptachne or a Muklenbergia,1 I can't say which, as I have not seen the generic characters of either. No. 2. I cannot make out as the specimens are very imperfect. A friend thinks it Microlaena polynoda, but I doubt this. No (3) is a Danthonia perhaps a form of “nuda” but I doubt that also. No (4) seems a Carpha; does it grow in Australia? No (5) is the Stewart Island plant. No (6) is Raoulia Petriensis (Kirk); No (7) is apparently a new Raoulia I gathered last summer; it is close to 'Munroi'.2 I shall feel much obliged if you could give me your opinion of the first five and of (7). I have a bottle of heads of Donatia in spirits I can send you if you desire it. Of course the seeds will be killed, but they will be quite fit for examination. In the meantime I content myself with sending you the dried specimens. I was unfortunate in being for a long time out of town when Dr Beccari was here; I am very sorry I did not meet him. In conclusion let me congratulate you on the close of the Flora Austraiensis.3 It is a work of enormous labour, and of very great value. Your name will long live in connection with it.
In haste,
Yours sincerely,
D. Petrie.
Baron Von Mueller.
Carpha
Cyperaceae
Danthonia nuda
Donatia
Microlaena polynoda
Muklenbergia
Raoulia Munroi
Raoulia Petriensis
Streptachne
Please cite as “FVM-78-06-10c,” 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