To Nicholas Holtze   9 September 1891

9/9/91.

 

This day, dear Mr Holtze, arrived your and your brothers1 plants in best state. They are nice specimens. Within the next days I will write down the names of most and communicate them to you. The one with two-colored spike is probably Neptunia spicata. I will see. Some other of your plants can be named in honor of Earl Kintore.2

Do you like, as your father did, joining the great Royal hortic. Soc. of England?3 as F.R.H.S.? It costs only £2.-.- annually for which you obtain the Society's publications free. I will gladly propose you.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller

 

Is the fruit of the Brachychiton with large red flowers (B. paradoxus or B. ramiflorus) hairy or smooth (glabrous) outside? Bentham seems to have given the description of a different fruit under B. ramiflorus.4 Is it of large size?

 

Brachychiton paradoxus

Brachychiton ramiflorus

Neptunia spicata

 
1
Waldemar Holtze.
2
The Earl of Kintore, Governor of South Australia 1889-95, visited Darwin in April 1891, then returned overland across the continent to Adelaide. No plant named for Kintore or his family name, Keith-Falconer, has been found in APNI.
3
Nomination forms for the Royal Horicultural Society have not survived.
4
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 1, p. 227, where the fruit was described as 'glabrous outside'.

Please cite as “FVM-91-09-09,” 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 23 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/91-09-09