I send you seeds of two more fodder plants to supplement it, M. scutellata, Bauh. and M. orbicularis, All. You doubtless have a careful man to start them.1 They are annual, but produce an immense number of fruits, which the sheep lick up and eat when pasturage fails. I have gathered as many as 1,400 seeds from a single plant.
Medicago orbicularis
Medicago scutellata
MacOwen concluded his note 'Have we the careful man? Rather, and his name is Edw. G. Alston', who had been given the packet of seeds. Alston had also been instrumental in the introduction of Atriplex halimoides, see notes to M to the Editor of the Indian forester, 24 June 1893 (in this edition as 93-06-24c).
Letter not found. For the text given here, see 'Useful fodder plants', Agricultural journal of the Cape of Good Hope, 7 September 1893, pp. 335-6, a paragraph signed by MacOwen as 'P.M.O.'. The note concerns the utility of Medicago sativa, and MacOwan introduces the quoted passage by:
the above notes are taken from Dr. F. Von Mueller's valuable book "Select Plants for Culture in Extra-Tropical Countries" [sic, see B91.09.01, the most recent edition], a quarry whence a whole generation of writers have helped themselves to knowledge, often with scant acknowledgment. The author writes to me to express his gratification that the Cape is at last waking up to the value of his Atriplex, or salt-bush. He says:
Item is dated to July 1893 as the latest likely date it could have been sent in order to reach Capetown in time to be published there in early September.
The passage was very slightly paraphrased in Dubbo dispatch, 20 February 1894, p. 2, which commented that to Baron von Mueller, 'therefore, belongs the credit of widely publishing the advantages of a burrless Medick, and he has been the means of distributing both plants in many Australian localities in which it now flourishes’.
Please cite as “FVM-93-07-00f,” 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