30/11/81.
Excuse me, dear Mr Buchanan,1 that I left your full and interesting letter for 2 weeks unanswered, and delayed thanking you for the Raoulias, kindly sent. I am trying to finish off some literary work by the end of the year; & as the routine-engagements leave me anyhow but little leisure, I had lately no spare hours for any but very urgent correspondence. I feel greatly honored by your connecting my name with a Veronica there, as it is such a lovely genus, the German species of which I named & collected already in my boyhood, and as hitherto not one plant in the N.Z. flora bore my name.2
In a few weeks I shall have some leisure, I hope, to investigate carefully the Raoulia question; meanwhile you may "in free nature" be among them, & then you will see much better, how far the unisexuality may occur & extend in each species, than I ever shall be able to ascertain from dried specimens. The fresh capitula show the differences of sex at a glance, so that hundreds of specimens can be viewed in a short time. I suppose you will in the holidays be again among your alpine darlings.
Prof Petri3 wrote to me about the Hemiphues, when 2 years ago he discovered it, & I pointed out to him, then, that the genus had given way to Actinotus4
It is curious that no Selaginella has yet been found in NZ, not even the S. uliginosa, which is so common in all the southern regions of Austr. & Tasmania. You may still find it, and so the minute mosslike S. Preissiana
Do you still think, that two Caltha's can be kept separate in N.Z? A white-flowered & a yellow-flowered, or did Hooker describe the color of the flowers wrongly?
Allow me to ask whether you happen to have and can spare a few ripe fruit spikelets of the restiaceous genus Sporadanthus? I further beg of you, to send me fresh some few ripe fruits of Hartigshea5 (or Dysoxylon) as I like to examine the arillers in connection with some Australian species, also a few flowers.
Your excellent remarks on the varied causes, which influence the alpine clime in your islands, give me a much better idea than I ever had on the subject before. I should have thought, that the tree-vegetation of the N. Island would have advanced above 4500 feet. In nearly the same latitude we have trees almost 1000 feet higher in upper Gippsland, indeed dwarfed trees in favorable spots up to 6000 and diminutive bushes up to 6500 feet.
With my best wishes for your welfare
Ferd. von Mueller.
A short paper on the semi dioecism of Antennaria nubigena I have sent to the R.S. of Tasmania last month.6 Have you a few ripe fruits of Persoonia Tora to spare? What is their color.
Would Ran. Buchanani7 at 8000 be the extreme limit of N.Z. Alp vegetation.
Actinotus
Antennaria nubigena
Caltha
Dysoxylon
Hartigshea
Hemiphues
Persoonia Tora
Ranunculus Buchanani
Raoulia
Selaginella Preissiana
Selaginella uliginosa
Sporadanthus
Veronica
Please cite as “FVM-81-11-30,” 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