15/3/95
Let me thank you, dear Prof Tracy, to send me your excellent essay on culture plants, introduced for forage into your states.1 I hope soon to send you the augmented 9th Edition of the "Select plants"2 which is now to pass through the press.
You can render me a special service, if you will be so good to inform me whether any of the Panicums, indigenous to the Eastern states of North-America have any prominent pasture-value. Panicum proliferum I have already admitted into former editions of the Select plants; but the genus is represented by other seemingly valuable rural species in your regions, and it is remarkable that this mainly tropic genus penetrates so much farther north in the western hemisphere than in the eastern.3 Such hardy Panicums would therefore be particularly valuable for naturalisation in other countries of the temperate zone.
With regardful
remembrance your
Ferd von Mueller
A late medical Colleague of mine took a high position here, Dr Tracy, perhaps he belongs to your relations.4
Panicum proliferum
There is a copy of Tracy (1894) in the Library at MEL.
B95.04.08.
M did not include any information from Tracy about Panicum species in the new edition.
ie: Richard Thomas Tracy, co-founder of the Women's Hospital, Melbourne, and pioneer abdominal surgeon. He emigrated from Ireland via London and died in 1874.
Please cite as “FVM-95-03-15a,” 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