202 Pitt Street
Sydney 19/1/94
My Dear Baron,
I have just received some fruits of Grevillea Shepherdi1 which I now enclose under separate cover, they have been a good deal knocked about but I trust they will be in sufficiently good preservation to enable you to describe the plant. My Son tells me he came upon a few plants quite 12 feet high but as stated before2 the average height is about 8 feet. There is only one seed in each pod and in no case could he find a single serrated leaf all being plain as pr samples a few more of which I enclose with seeds
With kindest regards
My Dear Baron
Yours sincerely
P. L. C. Shepherd
Baron von Mueller K.C.M.G.
Govt. Botanist
Melbourne
Grevillea Shepherdi
At the 15 January 1894 meeting of the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, M exhibited 'the variety Shepherdiana of Grevillea asplenifolia … from Cole River, near Jervis Bay' (Victorian Naturalist, vol. 10, p. 151). The name Grevillea shepherdi is given in Maiden & Betche (1916), p. 59, with a note 'Mueller proposed in 1893 the name G. Shepherdi for a species from the Nattai River differing from. G. asplenifolia chiefly in the narrow entire leaves, but he never published the description, probably because he regarded it later on as a form of G. asplenifolia.…'.
Shepherd is clearly referring to the plant sent with P. Shepherd to M, 27 December 1893, although he does not there specify the normal height of the plant, suggesting that there are other related letters not found.
MS found with a specimen of Grevillea asplenifolia (MEL 14279) collected near Cape Jervis, NSW, by one of Shepherd's sons, 1894. The specimen NSW92331 is accompanied by a note from 'L. Shepherd', presumably Patrick Shepherd's eldest son, Lindesay (1858-1933).
MS annotation by M: 'Answ 22/1/94'. Letter not found.
Please cite as “FVM-94-01-19,” 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