From Benedetto Scortechini to Ferdinand von Mueller   22 Apr 1882

Logan Village¹ 22d April 1882

Dear Baron

Many thanks for the VIII decade of your monograph of the Eucalypts,² and many more thanks too for your thoughtfulness in naming the Mezoneuron after me.³

By last mail I received a communication from the London L. S.⁴ in which my admission among the fellows was notified to me. Let me express my thanks to you for the part you took in it.⁵

Most of the specimens of my last sending were gathered around Bundaberg, which is a large township north of Maryborough, about fifty miles from it, on the Burnett river. Gin Gin is a railway station on the line from Bundaberg to Mount Perry, takes its name from a creek, which in turn gives it to a large tract of country around there. Southport is a rising place at the mouth of Nerang Creek, a sea-side place of resort within Queensland territory about fifteen miles from Point Danger.

The petals of Saccopetalum Bidwillii Benth. are dark-purple. In the dry specimens the colour changes very little into a deeper tint. The shrub from which I plucked the flowers and others I saw are little over ten feet in height. It is weak with slender branches, of which there are many.

In my next sending I shall include Rhizophora mucronata. As I have been so much away from home lately, my recent specimens are heaped up in confusion, and it would take some time in hunting up any one of them. After a fortnight from this I shall have a little rest at home, and then I hope to be able to arrange my collection properly. I enclose now a specimen of Polyosma Cunninghamii J. J. Ben. (Saxifr.) which I picked up in a hurried visit I paid to Tallebudgera before yesterday, another Queensland habitat, and so we have the two Polyosmas. Perhaps it won't come too late to be added to your census.⁶ I always get novelties down there. If those scrubs were thoroughly searched, heaven knows how many new plants may come to light! I should like to spend a few days there in a good season with some settler, who is falling scrubs. — I send included herein a flower of an Eugenia I got there. It clearly belongs to the section Jambosa. This was the only flower in the tree I saved in my pocket-book. The stamens were falling off so quickly that I could not save more. I left some specimens down there to show inflorescence and fruit. The inflorescence is paniculate and terminal, the fruit is urceolate — crowded by the persistent lobes of the calyx. The panicles are large and somewhat trichotomous The scent of the flowers calls to mind that of the home honey-suckle. When I go down again will get the dried specimens and forward them to you.

In mentioning the localities of Eucalyptus erythronema Turck, you have Mount Lindsay for it. Surely it cannot be our Mount Lindsay. There must be two mountains going by the same name.⁷

With the kindest regards I remain

Your humble servant

B Scortechini⁸

416

Nephelium sp? Sapindaceae.

Teviot, tributary of the Logan⁹.

The fruit points to a Nephelium and close to N. connatum. Perhaps it is N. semicinereum, of which I have seen no description

172

Loranthus bifurcatus Benth. Loranthaceae¹⁰

Logan River

It seems to answer to this description but being a tropical Loranthus I doubt its existence down here

1881¹¹

Eucalyptus erythronema

Eugenia

Jambosa

Loranthus bifurcatus

Mezoneuron

Nephelium connatum

Nephelium semicinereum

Polyosma Cunninghamii

Rhizophora mucronata

Saccopetalum Bidwillii

Sapindaceae