To Nicholas Holtze   12 January 1892

12/1/92.

This I write, dear Mr Holtze, on board of the Steamer, which brings me back from Hobart, where I had to instal the Governor¹ as President of the Australian Association for Advancement of Science. It is too late to felicitate you properly to the new year, but let me trust, that the new annual span of time, on which we have entered, may be replete with happiness to you. In answering your letter of the 17 Dec.² I have no books for reference before me; but I can at least in part offer information, such as you are seeking. Answer about Utricularia albiflora³ has not yet come from London. In using the name Terminalia latifolia before for your collection, I made a memory mistake. I used that name in my exploratory diaries 1855-1856,⁴ but on return found that it was preoccupied, so I changed it to T. platyphylla. As regards Mimulus Uvedaliae and M. debilis, the perplexity may by you perhaps be solved, by limiting M. debilis, as I did in first instance to yellow flowered plant. I saw it only once myself; so I can not bring your extensive local experience to bear on it. Let me however remark, that I never in the hundreds of cases, when I could watch here in the south M. gracilis found it vary with yellow flowers, and so it is here neither with M. repens. Both however grow very much larger in wet soil, than in drier localities.

That I not recognized your Zizyphus as belonging to that genus, you must adscribe to the fact, that I have often to name specimens at late evening-hours, when after the toils of the day my visual power becomes dim. Oryza I certainly regard as indigenous in trop. Australia. I never saw it, until I came to the Upper Vict River, and to Sturt's Creek;⁵ it is nowhere in Australia a coast-plant, so far as I am aware. Consider also, what a multitude of other Grasses are Australian as well as Indian In 1855 & 1856 Oryza could not have reached the places where I saw it, through Malayan advents. If migratory water birds brought it, then we have to regard it as indigenous, for that would apply to many places in South-Asia as well.

Monochoria⁶ I recommend to your special local study. M. cyanea is the only species which has all the stamens of equal, and is exclusively Australian whereas the narrow-leaved spec, discovered by you is identical with an Indian, which has one anther different to the rest. It is however quite possible, that M. cyanea occurs also in a narrow-leaved form. A glance of yours on the flowers of the living plant will show at once, whether you have before you M. cyanea or an other species

Phaseolus Max is the oldest name of the species, though long discarded. I have restored it in the Census⁷ and Select plants.⁸ I may not have named hastily this plant on subsequent occasions, because several allied species exist, and I do not like to commit myself by trusting to my over burdened memory, and have not always time to refer on such subjects at once to authorities. It is very pleasing that you will still further enlarge the material, so thoughtfully provided for the fuller study of your many Utricularias, and thus look forward also with particular expectation to the fruits of the narrow-leaved plant, allied to Clerodendron. Is it always dwarf. It is possible, that an error occurred in naming and describing Sida Holtzei It may be a Malachra. I did not think of that hitherto extra-australian genus, until its characteristics, well known to me, from earlier days flashed again across my mind When I am back at my humble little dwelling and working place, I will reexamine the Sida Holtzei⁹ so also the Melodorum which I have since if I rightly remember transferred to an other genus, still as new. I yet set great hopes on you to obtain from your youthful enthusiasm & experienced search many plants additional for Australia.

If not unforseen hindrances intervene, I shall see your worthy parents in Adelaide¹⁰ during this month, as I intend to consult personally with Sir Thomas Elder about the measures yet required for the forth coming south-polar expedition of Baron Nordenskiold.¹¹

With regardful remembrance

your Ferd von Mueller

Clerodendron

Malachra

Melodorum

Mimulus debilis

Mimulus gracilis

Mimulus repens

Mimulus Uvedaliae

Monochoria cyanea

Oryza

Phaseolus Max

Sida Holtzei

Terminalia latifolia

Terminalia platyphylla

Utricularia albiflora

Zizyphus