3/1/93
I had induced my Assistant, dear Dr Dyer, to ascend during these holidays Mt Baw Baw, first scaled by me (1860) the only place except one other Mount close bye where the subalpine Wittsteinia vacciniacea grows.1 He just brought living plants; so I send some few at once to you, and along with it Coprosma pumila J. Hooker, — trusting that they will endure in the Agar-case (moss-packed) the few weeks passage to you. The plant is sub alpine and would require cold-house-culture, in humus-soil. It likes humid cool forest places here in the highlands, also wet fissures of rocks. When once it may reach you, the culture and subsequent multiplication from roots would be most easy.
I sent berries repeatedly, but the seeds seem never to have germinated.2 So far, as I know, the plant is new for European culture.3 As a wondrous rarity it is a counterpart to Orphanidesia.
Always with best attachment
Your
Ferd. von Mueller
Coprosma pumila
Orphanidesia
Wittsteinia vacciniacea
See M to R. Heales, 10 January 1861.
M had earlier attempted to send living plants to Kew (M to W. Hooker, 25 June 1861) and to Edinburgh (M to J. Balfour, 28 March 1869 [in this edition as 69-03-28b] and M to J. Hooker, January 1871).
The Bulletin has this sentence as 'So far as I know the plant is new for European culture.'
Date stamped: Royal Gardens Kew 8. Feb. 93, and annotated in pencil by W. Watson: 51/1893 (i.e. register number in Kew Inwards Book of specimens received); and in blue pencil by W. Thiselton-Dyer: Bulletin.
This letter, lightly edited, is quoted extensively in Kew's Bulletin of miscellaneous information, 1893, p. 112 (B93.05.04). A. R . Wallace had noted in The Garden that probably no attempt had been made to obtain plants from the cold uplands of Australia. ‘Acting on this hint, a copy of Mr. Wallace’s paper was forwarded to Sir F. von Mueller in Melbourne [letter not found], to whom we are indebted for a very large proportion of the living representatives of the Australian flora now at Kew, and whose zeal is shown by the following letter which accompanied a box containing two plants both likely to live’.
Please cite as “FVM-93-01-03a,” 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