To William Thiselton-Dyer   28 April 1885

28/4/85

 

Let me thank you, dear Mr Dyer, for sending me the Kew-Report for 1882,1 the Museum-Guide2 and Mess. Bower & Vines practical Botany,3 all of value here in a variety of ways.4 I am obliged also for the specimen of Myoporum brevipes for my Monography.5

The complete morphology and history of the development of Phylloglossum should be very interesting, considering the odd position, which that genus occupies between Lycopodiaceae and Ophioglosseae. I cannnot however befriend myself with the idea of Coniferae and Cycadeae being placed near Lycopodiaceae, notwithstanding the gigantic fossil forms of the latter. Coniferae and Cycadeae are so truely dicotyledoneous as they could possibly be; and when we come to the gnetaceous forms and even Welwitchia, which Sir Joseph so brilliantly illustrated, we see that they ought to be kept with other Dicotyledon[e]s and have only external resemblances to spore-bearing plants. I look on them neither as having absolutely naked ovules; and traces of a stigmatic apparatus may be found even among the Cupressinae, e.g. Fitzroya.6

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

I can send more Phylloglosum tubers, should you not succeed in growing the lot forwarded.

 

Coniferae

Cupressinae

Cycadeae

Fitzroya

Lycopodiaceae

Myoporum brevipes

Ophioglosseae

Phylloglossum

Welwitchia

1
Hooker (1884a).
2
Oliver (1875).
3
Bower & Vine (1885).
4
See M to J. Hooker, 27 January 1885.
5
See M to J. Hooker, 31 October 1884. M was working on B86.13.21.
6
M is reacting to the view of the morphology and development of Coniferae, Cycadeae and Lycopodiaceae, especially the reproductive systems, as represented by Bower and Vine, and on the systematic relationships implied by the sequence used in the text. (Bower and Vine do not include practical exercises on the cycads.) See Maroske (2006) for M's views on the systematic arrangment of plants.

Please cite as “FVM-85-04-28a,” 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 19 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/85-04-28a