From Joseph Hooker   8 December 1884

Dec 8 /841

My dear Baron

If I do not answer a letter at once I do not know when I may! so I break off my work at Alternanthera nodiflora & A sessilis to thank you for your just opened, & read, of 23/10/842 & its most interesting enclosures from Dr Scortechini! — (What a name for an Italian!).3 — I need hardly say I shall be delighted to see him & give him all assistance here, & shall urge his publishing his new species with all despatch. I shall indeed be only too glad of his help in that way. As to subsidies, that we must attack Sr H. Lowe4 for — He has returned already I believe.

With your letter came a very interesting one from Consul Sandwich of Crete to whom I had written about the Evergreen Plant that Pliny mentions5 & of which he sends me leaves & fruit, the latter differing considerably from the common P. orientalis.

We are busy at the Herbarium about getting up a Catalogue of Chinese plants by Mr Forbes6 who has spent some years there (not the [Timor land] & N. Guinea man7) — a merchant, & for which we have a small grant from the R.S.8 It will be most useful.

I am printing Labiatae of Flora B. I.9 & preparing Amaranthaceae for press, but I am so distracted with Councils & Committees, official & unofficial, in London, that what with these & Garden work, & my family duties, I am hard pressed to get on.

Ever most sincerely your

J D Hooker

 

I have two parcels of plants to thank you for[.] Oliver is busy with them.

 

Alternanthera nodiflora

Alternanthera sessilis ­

Amaranthaceae

Labiatae

Platanus orientalis

1
MS embossed with crest of Royal Gardens Kew.
2
M to J. Hooker, 23 October 1884.
3
The words 'Scortechini' and 'Italian' have been underlined and a large exclamation mark pencilled in the margin against this section. In Italian, the verb scortecciare means to strip the bark off!
4
Sir Hugh Low.
5
Natural History, book 12 v. 11: ‘est Gortynae in insula Creta iuxta fintem platanus una insignis utriusque linguae monimentis, numquam folia dimittens’. [There is a single plane-tree at the side of a spring at Gortyn in the island of Crete which is celebrated in records written both in Greek and Latin, as never shedding its leaves.] The Evergreen plane, described in 1908 as the species Platanus cretica, has since also been treated as a variety, P. orientalis var cretica.
6
Francis Blackwell Forbes.
7
Henry Ogg Forbes.
8
Royal Society.
9
J. Hooker (1875-97).

Please cite as “FVM-84-12-08a,” 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 26 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/84-12-08a