From Ferdinand von Mueller to the Gardeners' Chronicle   [Mar 1892]

In the year 1854 it was demonstrated by myself that the most southern place reached by Palms in continental Australia was near the entrance to the Snowy River, at 37° 30', where Livistona australis was found by me to reach a height of 80 feet (see my Official Report to the Victorian Parliament, pp. 5 and 15 of that year¹). At that time the most eastern part of Gippsland was unsettled, and the last eastern habitation was deserted, as of the two inhabitants, the "hut-keeper" had just before been slain by the cannibals of that region, and the "stock-man" had only saved his life on horseback by jumping the fences of the station. The last part of my journey then had to be effected on foot, as I could not get my horses without help across the Snowy River; yet accompanied by one "old hand," I penetrated, armed, of course, for several miles beyond the locality of the massacre, through the dense "bush," the autochthones getting often near us, and being in possession of fire-arms robbed from the hut. I satisfied myself there and then that the Gippsland Palm was the genuine Livistona australis of my never-to-be-forgotten friend, Von Martius, this species being well known here in cultivation. Already, then, since that time the same noble Palm has been discovered in two other localities, in jungles not very far from the Snowy River, which watercourse, though bearing so frigid a name as coming from the Australian Alps, where I had just before advanced to the glaciers of its courses, flows in its lowest course really through an always winterless country, teeming with sub-tropical vegetation (vide Report, 1854).

When a party of the Victorian Field Naturalists Club, at my suggestion, made a tour, some few years ago, through the whole length of the country, from the Snowy River to the Genoa, Professor Spencer, Mr. C. French,² Mr. Frost, Mr. Jackson, and Mr. Searl³ went to one of the isolated spots, where the Livistona grows, and under an umbrella, while it rained heavily, a pencil-sketch of the Palm was made, from which hasty drawing the lithographic illustration was taken which appeared in the Victorian Naturalist.⁴ That under such unfavourable circumstances some inaccuracies occurred in the delineation, cannot be surprising; but while some leaves were drawn rather pinnately, others are shown as quite fan-shaped. Professor Spencer now points out that the sketch was not correctly lithographed, and that he has since seen the Livistona australis in South Queensland without perceiving differences between it and the Gippsland Palm.

As regards the particular Australian Fan-Palm, which was referred to in a recent number of the Gardeners' Chronicle as having somewhat cuneate leaves, it is not likely to be an extra tropical species.⁵ In the Census of Australian Plants,⁶ I admitted only three species of Livistona, inasmuch as dubious or very imperfectly-known species are omitted in that work, and retained for further consideration till another census can be instituted. Thus, I have recorded there besides Livistona australis, only L. Leichardti and L. Mariae, concerning which some notes are contained in the Fragm. Phytograph. Austral. (in vol. iii., 221 and 283, also in vol. xi., 54 and 55).⁷

Coming now to R. Brown's two intra-tropic species of Livistona,⁸ it must be admitted that some of the enigmas concerning them have not yet been solved, even after the lapse of nearly a century. In our young libraries here the great Palm-work of Von Martius⁹ is not yet available, hence I cannot follow up the present enquiry from that source; but, during the forty-five years of my uninterrupted researches in Australia, I have become acquainted with only one Livistona in Nature, with the characteristic of ovate fruitlets, ascribed to both L. inermis and L. humilis. It would seem furthermore that the petioles of young plants are far more spinous than those of aged plants, a remark fitting also L. australis. The correctness of this observation might be tested even in European conservatories. When in 1856 I saw a tall Livistona far in the interior of Arnhem's-land, evidently the same which Leichhardt noticed there in 1845,¹⁰ I gave it the name of that lamented geographer, because it agreed not with the short diagnosis given by R. Brown and by Kunth¹¹ for the tropic Austral Livistonas, and when I subsequently became almost convinced, so far as I here could judge, that L. humilis is a youthful L. inermis, I kept up the name L. Leichhardti for the united species, their original names having become inapplicable now.

The third genuine species of Australian Livistona, namely L. Mariae, occurs in Central Australia on Gill's Range, and also on a tributary of the Finke River, in about 24° S., and in West Australia on the Hamersley Range, in about 22° S. It was dedicated at the time of nuptial festivities to H.R.H. the Duchess of Edinburgh.¹² The greatest height known of this extremely local Palm is 70 feet. The petioles are somewhat spiney at the lower part, and attain a length of 5 feet, and that is also the maximum length of the leaves; these in a young state are of a splendid coppery colour, and in age of a remarkable pale green. The panicle had been seen to attain a length of 10 feet, according to notes from the German missionaries in Central Australia.¹³ As seemingly germinable seeds were sent by me long ago to European gardens, it is probably now a well-known Palm in culture there, as it is in some parts of Australia. Should this not be the case with you, then living plants might be obtained, for instance, from Mr. J. Edgar, of Rockhampton, Queensland. The fruitlets are globular, and particularly large, from the Western Australia locality in contrast with those of L. australis from which species L. Mariae is also distinguished by the paler leaves, with elongated rachis, which forms a solid axis sometimes nearly 1 foot long beyond the petiole, whereby the leaf gets a somewhat cuneate form; on this account it seems likely that the unnamed Livistona, referred to in the Gardeners' Chronicle, may be L. Mariae. A rather full description of that Palm, chiefly from Western Australian material, was given in the Fragm. Phytograph. Austral., xi., 54, 55. But the fruitlets there described had lost their exocarp, which is brownish outside, and thus less dark-coloured than in other congeners. The flowers, as seen on the West Australian plant, are hardly of half the size, compared to those of L. australis.

F. von Mueller.

Livistona australis

Livistona humilis

Livistona inermis

Livistona Leichardti

Livistona Mariae