To William Thiselton-Dyer   20 October 1891

20/10/911

 

Let me thank you, dear Dr Dyer, for your special allusion to me as a contributor of fungs to your grand establishment in the last Bulletin2 - For the latest names-list I am also grateful to you and Dr Cooke,3 and I will see, that you and he are not troubled in future with such widely distributed species as e.g. Polyporus sanguineus, which I named of course myself at once, when I landed in Australia 1847. You can easily understand, that I cannot always with my own hands pack up fungs &c for Kew, especially when hurried with any other heavy extra-work, such as the issue of the new enlarged edition of the Select plants.4

Always, dear Dr Dyer,

regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

 

Remember me kindly to Sir Joseph, when you see him next. I offer you both my best felicitation to Christmas and New Year.

Have Bailey’s recently described plants received perhaps critical comparisons in Kew, such as the supposed Austral Zinnia, the Spermacoces, Trichinium Cryptocaryas &c.5 In most cases I have but the merest fragments from him, He often and too rashly describes from imperfect material the description also being too superficial,6 so that as in the case of the several Cryptocaryas not even the genus can be fixed! If any safe results 7 have been obtained at Kew, could I for the Census benefit from this?8

 

Cryptocarya

Polyporus sanguineus

Spermacoce

Trichinium

Zinnia

Date stamped Royal Gardens Kew 5. Dec. 91 and annotated in pencil by W. HemsleyWBH.
‘Among Cryptogams the most important additions to the Herbarium are … various Australian Fungi from Sir Ferdinand Mueller K.C.M.G’, Bulletin of miscellaneous information (Royal Gardens, Kew), No. 57, September 1891, p. 246.
See annotations to M to W. Thiselton-Dyer, 21 July 1891.
B91.09.01.
Bailey described Spermacoce jacobsonii, S. uniseta , Trichinium burtonii , Zinnia australis, Cryptocarya bancroftii , C. graveolens , C. insignis , C. palmerstoni and over 45 other species in 1891 issues of the Botany bulletin, Queensland Department of Agriculture. (APNI). Of these species, a dozen are recognized as valid in the Australian Plant Census (accessed October 2012 ).
the description also being too superficial is written in the central margin of the front of the MS, its position in the text indicated by asterisks.
safe is interlined in the MS.
Have Bailey’s ... benefit from this? is written on the front of the folio, opposite the text of the first page of the letter and upside down relative to it.

Please cite as “FVM-91-10-20,” 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 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/vonmueller/letters/91-10-20