To William Thiselton-Dyer   25 July 1885

Private ¹

25/7/85

I like to mention to you, dear Mr Dyer, that Ottelia ovalifolia does not grow within 100 miles of Melbourne; and as I have no garden whatever, I cannot observe it in cultivation. You will be therefore now with the growing plant before you in a much better position, to describe the particulars of its dimorphism than I ever had.² I was wondering why so nice and remarkable a plant was not at once figured in the bot. Magazine, after all the trouble I took in putting Kew into possession of it, and before it flower[s] elsewhere.³ Mr Fitzgerald seems with his species of Orchids fast to drift into Jordanism;⁴ see his numerous new species of Prasophyllum even from the long-trodden ground in N.S.W. He spoils his work by the ill differentiation of the species and his want of true appreciation of the specific limits, the faulty etymology e.g. Dendrobium falcirostrum⁵ Sarcochilus rubicentrum,⁶ which more-over is the well known here much cultivated S. Hartmanni[!]⁷

I saved him from making of the N.S.W. Adenochilus a new genus; he does not know of Blume’s Pedilonum, and establishes after the reduction of that again a new genus Coelandrium!⁸ A Gentleman here, who is a good judge, call his illustrations, excellent as they are in other respects, “hazy” and certainly there is a want of sharpness of expression, which the darkness of the paper makes worse. The coloring is often poor, He is sulky with me, his first “Maitre”, for not adopting all his species downright for my Census,⁹ and he stands alone in not preserving any dried specimens either for himself or others.

Regardfully your

Ferd von Mueller.¹⁰

I don't believe in the validity of his Dendrobium Phalaenopsis¹¹

Adenochilus

Coelandrium

Dendrobium falcirostrum

Dendrobium Phalaenopsis

Ottelia ovalifolia

Pedilonum

Prasophyllum

Sarcochilus Hartmanni

Sarcochilus rubicentrum