20/11/81.
Let me express my best thanks, dear Miss Bate, for your sending of a fruit-specimen of your Myoporum. It enabled me to finish the description of this very interesting and characteristic species, and I have sent the manuscript at once to the Linnean Society of N.S.W., so that the description may be published yet in the volume for 1881.1
This gave me an opportunity also, to make publicly known the other plants, which you so far south traced. I hope this scientific acknowledgment will encourage you to continue your searches, as doubtless a whole host of rare plants and some new ones remain there yet to be discovered. From the photograms kindly sent by you, it must be a luxuriant vegetation there! As one of the photographic cards contains the picture of the young Lady Botanist and what I suppose to be her respected mother,2 I beg to send you my poor carte de visite also.
It is not likely, that the fruit on your Myoporum will get much larger while ripening. Kindly pick some, when quite ripe, so that this handsome bush may be introduced into European greenhouses also. I should also feel obliged, if you would press & dry there about a dozen branchlets for me, so that I may send this new plant to several correspondents.
With regardful remembrance your
Ferd. von Mueller.
I like to have a leaf & berry of each of your figs.
Pray do not go to any great trouble about the Palm.
Myoporum
Please cite as “FVM-81-11-20,” 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