To Joseph Hooker   9 July 1884

9/7/84

 

Herewith, dear Sir Joseph, I beg to send you the only specimen of a very beautiful species of Dendrobium, which I have from Fiji, where it was gathered as a great rarity by Dr Lucas,1 a medical friend of mine in Melbourne who recently went on a recreation tour to Fiji. It is not contained in Seemann’s work;2 but as two species are mentioned in Horne’s volume,3 D. Gordonii & D. Hornei, it may be one of these two, and they may since have been described in some publication not accessible to me.4 I venture therefore, to send the description of this one in msc.,5 and should the species not yet have appeared in a diagnostic form, perhaps you kindly will give it publicity through the L.S.6 or Mr Britten’s journal.7 To Mr Britten I am under promise for some contribution since some time. If you have the plant from Mr Horne in Kew, would you then kindly return this my only specimen.8

Even if this should be D. Gordoni or D. Hornei, it would be well to publish my description after alteration of the specific name.9

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.10

 

Dendrobium gordoni

Dendrobium hornei

1
Thomas Pennington Lucas (1843–1917).
2
Seemann (1865-73).
3
Horne (1881).
4

There is a vertical blue pencil line in the margin of the MS next to volume . . . to me.

Descriptions by S. Le M. Moore of Dendrobium gordoni and D. hornei were published in J. G. Baker (1883), pp. 372 and 373 respectively.

5
MS not found.
6
Linnean Society.
7
Journal of botany.
8
return . . . specimen is underlined in blue pencil in the MS. There is a specimen of D. gordonii in Melbourne (MEL 569473), noted by M as collected by 'Dr Lucas' and accompanied by a slip of paper with the comment: 'to be returned to F. M.'
9
J. Hooker to M, 31 August 1884, confirms the identification as Dendrobium gordonii.
10

The letter is accompanied by the following memorandum from N. E. Brown, 26 August 1884 (f. 112), on which Hooker has written 'Baron Mueller informed Sept. [7]/84 JDH' [letter not found, but see J. Hooker to M, 31 August 1884]. A comment in a third hand referring to a specimen sent with M to J. Hooker, 28 July 1884, is not included here, but in the notes to that letter.

MEMORANDUM

SUBJECT Dendrobium from Fiji & Oberonia Titania sent by Baron Von Mueller

Having carefully compared this, I find it to be Dendrobium Gordoni, Horne (described in Journ. Linn. Soc. vol. XX, p. 372) but at the same time this so-called species appears to be only a variety, or island form, of D. macrophyllum, Rich.

Oberonia Titania Lindl. in Folia Orchidacea, Oberonia, p. 8, no. 46bis

N. E. Brown.

Please cite as “FVM-84-07-09a,” 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 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/84-07-09a