14/6/84.
The addition of Hakea Baxteri to the S.A. Flora is very interesting, dear Professor, showing that many W.A plants you will have to call yet your own in S.A.
It is very generous of you, to invite me to your new estate near Nairne;1 and I beg to thank you and your kind Lady for the offered hospitality, which some day I may have the happiness to accept, and heightened by botanic wanderings in the environs with you.
This invitation brings me back 30 years and more, when a highly gifted and noble-minded sister of mine2 long passed away since was staying as a friend with the late Mrs Smillie, the mother of the then Advocate General of South Australia.3
Later the widow of Mr Smillie lived at Nairne, after having educated her beautiful young daughters in Germany and France. But alas! the young Ladies, who had inhered4 the tendency to Consumption from their father, fell both early victims to Phthisis; and the sorrowing mother lives now childless in Florence, retaining still as a source of income, so I believe, the Nairne property.
Let me advise you, to sow part of your property with Acacia decurrens. It grows much faster than A. pycnantha, has a bark quite as rich in tannin and much heavier. Of course, you will know, that A. decurrens is a much larger tree. Fresh seeds you would get cheaply and correct to name from Mr F. Abbott, Director of the bot. Garden of Hobart, who would guard against your getting seeds of Acacia dealbata. See "select plants5
Acacia dealbata
Acacia decurrens
Acacia pycnantha
Hakea Baxteri
Please cite as “FVM-84-06-14,” 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