To [Joseph Hooker]1    August 1880

About three years ago I sent specimens of a splendid Chloanthes to Kew; i.e. Chl. Elderi, with yellow & red flowers. In reality it constitutes a distinct genus = Hemiphora (fragm. X, 13);2 the plant is very beautiful and interesting. Could it find a place in the icones?3 Sir Th. Elder would feel gratified, to see it depicted.4

 

Chloanthes Elderi

Hemiphora

 
1
The addressee and date have been inferred from the content of J. Hooker to M, 8 November 1880. The other items mentioned in Hooker’s letter are consistent with this fragment having been sent in August 1880 (see M to J. Hooker, 10 August, 16 August and 28 August 1880).
2
B78.03.01, p. 13, under Chloanthes elderi,with a reference to the possibility that it should be designated a new genus. It is listed as Hemiphora in B82.13.16, p. 103.
3

icones is underlined and marked with a line in the margin. The following text is written in pencil on a piece of paper glued to the back of the letter:

'I have attached a memo of F. v M’s wish in the cover of Chloanthes [i.e. in the cover of the herbarium folder] — So we shall see when the specimen is laid in — I doubt if his material suffice, if it came by post with our present imperfect draughtsmanship DO' [i.e. Daniel Oliver].

MS annotation by Oliver on the attached paper: 'Cyperaceae monopolise at present'.

4
The species was not figured in Icones, but did appear in an uncoloured illustration in Engler’s botanische Jahrbucher, vol. 35 (1904), p. 518. In 1875 Sir Thomas Elder had funded Ernest Giles on an expedition from Port Augusta to Perth (Threadgill, 1922, vol. 1, pp. 153–7). It was on this expedition that J. Young collected the specimens described by M.

Please cite as “FVM-80-08-00,” 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 16 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/80-08-00