To Ralph Tate   27 October 1881

27/10/81

The umbelliferous annual, sent by you, dear Prof Tate, is Bupleurum tenuissimum L., a plant of wide distribution in Europe (inclusive Britain & Ireland), in N. Africa & W. Asia. It is evidently immigrated.

As regards the rights of Quinetia being considered a native, I beg of you to reconsider the case fully.¹ If you found that little annual near any place, where the K.G.Sound² Steamers are disembarking their goods, you may be sure that it is a hospitant. If away from any port or landing place, it will have to be considered, by what likely agency³ it became disseminated there. The following reasons are against its being a native.

1, Quinetia is gregarious in S. W. Australia, not near you.

2, If indigenous, it ought to have spread extensively like other annual composites.

3, In five years close searches near Adelaide I never saw it.

4, It is common at KGS.,⁴ and thus any few seeds of it may with embollage have become spread near Adelaide.

5, As early as 1847 I found in the vallies under Mt Lofty already Browns unioloides⁵ quite spontaneous, evidently disseminated without other foreign grasses near it.

6, We know now several hundred immigrated plants in Australia, and every year adds to them, especially by the increasing traffic.

7, When botanizing in the little-inhabited places between Swan River & "Geographe"-Bay⁶ 4 years ago, I found a Portuguese Galium there, that any one would have taken for a native. Indeed as the genus Galium is indigenous, I believed to have discovered a new species, until a critical examination of the plant undeceived me.

In the case of Quinetia, it is the wonder, not that it is now found, but that it did not come across long ago from KGS. Many plants will yet come across from thence with the steamers, and Quinetia is one which most easily would spread.

The value of your index⁷ is enhanced by the rigorous exclusion of immigrated plants; if once that exclusiveness is broken, the pure original aspect of the S. Austr. flora becomes disturbed. Hence I induced also Dr Woolls to banish his immigrated plants to a place at the end of his list.⁸ One of the values of my early searches will be to show, what is native, what not.

I look forward with eagerness to sendings from your Kang. Isl.⁹ friends, and want particularly for my monography all Eucalypts from thence, especially as I am not yet quite clear about E. cneorifolia, under which name Bentham mixed two very distinct species. I know, what both are, but do not know what intermediate stages the one of Kangaroo Island may show to E. oleosa. Fruit-specimens (branchlets) can — at all events — be got at any season of any of our myrtaceous plants.

I am sorry to hear of the death of my former assistant.¹⁰ He left me in good health, on his own accord, to establish his seed-business there. I raised him over the head of all other employees, more than doubled in the course of time his salary, gave him an opportunity by his being with me in my office to add daily to his knowledge, and have shown him numerous favors, which he could never reciprocate.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

Please thank the council for the kindness of according space to me in the new volume of your R.S. I find however at this moment myself hard pressed to finish off some arrear work in the Department here; and it would be some weeks before I could send you any manuscripts; kindly tell me what would be the latest "termin" to furnish my contribution. If it cannot be a lengthy one, I will send at least some brief notes in time.¹¹

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

Bupleurum tenuissimum

Cyperus unioloides

Eucalyptus cneorifolia

Eucalyptus oleosa

Galium

Quinetia