To Ralph Tate   22 November 1879

22/11/79.

In the 'Flora",¹ dear Prof. Tate, the localities are most scantily given, and thus also those of Isoetopsis graminifolia. It is however recorded from the Murray River in S. Austr,² where I found it already in 1848, when I gave this little plant the manuscript-name Rhizocephalum angustifolium, recognizing it as a new genus. But a set of my manuscripts, soon subsequently forwarded for Europe, was lost in a wreck of a Ship at the Cape of Good Hope and before, after some delays, the new manuscripts arrived in Germany, (to be published in the Linnaea) Turczaninow, who received the same plant from W.A. published it in Moscou (1851).³ So of course my earlier appellation was lost. Bentham, though with access to extensive manuscript notes on the range of very many species, (these notes being deposited at Kew) preferred to record only localities, from which he had actually seen specimens. I have since recorded a vast number of "habitat" in the fragmenta, and will do so still more fully in the new edition of the Flora, which — deo volente⁴ — I hope yet to bring out, with all the additional species (about 700⁵ hitherto published) and all the corrections.

I am not the least surprised at the gross mistake made there⁶ in naming the Scaevola spinescens as Lycium australe; altho' I have sent named specimens of the former often to Adelaide, and altho' any one who knew the meaning of the word Scaevola should recognize any species of that genus on a glance, when in flower.⁷ Entre nous I may mention, that from the garden there⁸ even for years the common Yorkshire fog (Holcus lanatus) was sent out as the gigantic Tussockgrass of the Falkland-Islands (Dactylis caespitosa); — and in a same manner paraded in public prints from the garden there for years the old Plinian & Dioscoridean Andropogon Haleppensis as the Coapim of W. trop. Africa (Panicum specabile)!⁹ If you will kindly spare any extraspecimens of any kind of plant from new localities for my collection, you will get due credit for them in my works.¹⁰ Well known plants of S.A., found by me thirty years, ago are in some instances left as S.A. unrecorded in the Flora, either by oversight in London, or for the reasons which I explained.

In 1860 I proved the Ranunculus sessiliflorus of RBr¹¹ as identical with R. parviflorus L. — I had it from many South Australian stations, as it is not uncommon in your Colony. Your Brachycome from the cliffs of the Bight¹² must be quite distinct from B. graminea, as your additional more developed specimen now proves. I wished much, that ripe fruit of it could be procured, as it may be a thick leaved form of a tender-leaved species, coast-plants usually becoming succulent.

Should the species (on obtaining ripe fruit) prove new, I will be happy to name it after you.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

Andropogon Haleppensis

Brachycome graminea

Dactylis caespitosa

Holcus lanatus

Isoetopsis graminifolia

Lycium australe

Panicum specabile

Ranunculus parviflorus

Ranunculus sessiliflorus

Rhizocephalum angustifolium

Scaevola spinescens