The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: 25, WILTON PLACE, S.W. ¶ 18 May 1866 ¶ My dear Sir ¶ ¶ I have to acknowledge yours of the 5th Feby ¶ received a few days after I last wrote. I am at present overwhelmed with work. Besides the Flora ...

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Physical location:

RB MSS M4, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 66.05.18a

Plant names

Aster
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Asteroideae
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Blumea
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Brachycome
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Brachystephium
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Celmisia
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Compositae
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Conyza aegyptiaca
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Conyza veronicaefolia
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Dicoma
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Elachothamnus
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Erigeron
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Eucalytpus
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Eurybia
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Eurybiopsis
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Heliantheae
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Kippistia
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Minuria
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Mutisiaceae
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Olearia
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Oliganthemum
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Paquerina
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Pluchea
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Pterigeron
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Rubiaceae
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Silphiosperma
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Steiroglossa
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Streptoglassa
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Therogeron
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Thespidium
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Vittadinia
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Preferred Citation:

George Bentham to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1866-05-18 [66.05.18a]. R.W. Home, Thomas A. Darragh, A.M. Lucas, Sara Maroske, D.M. Sinkora, J.H. Voigt and Monika Wells (eds), Correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller, <https://vmcp.rbg.vic.gov.au/id/66-05-18a>, accessed September 11, 2025

25, WILTON PLACE, S.W.

18 May 1866

My dear Sir

I have to acknowledge yours of the 5th Feby

M to G. Bentham, 5 February 1866.

received a few days after I last wrote. I am at present overwhelmed with work. Besides the Flora Australiensis of which I am printing two sheets a week I have been suddenly called on for a new edition of my British Handbook

Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3.

and have all the disturbance of my Anniversary Address

Bentham's annual address as President of the Linnean Society, published as Bentham (1866).

and the bustle of the London season — so that I only write a few words.

You ask me for a list of Eucalytpi as I have adopted them. The MS has been all at the printers but I am enabled to send you by this post nearly the whole of the genus as printed off — the few remaining species you will see from the Analytical Key and from your specimens which I trust you have safely received

I have finished and am just now in . I trust the remaining are on their way

Your supplemental will I fear come too late — for the printer goes on very regularly

As you object to it it is as you say a pity I adopted Australiensis but it is too late to alter it and the termination is very familiar to us Londinensis Edinensis Sinensis Albigensis

Bentham may be referring to the 13th-century Historia albigensis, a principal source of information about the so-called Cathar heresy that flourished in Languedoc in the south of France, and the papal attack on it known as the Albigensian crusade.

Veronensis Brasiliensis Parisiensis etc.

I send by this post 9 sheets of the Flora

By implication from the second paragraph, the nine sheets, each of 16 pages, were Bentham (1863-78), vol. 3, pp 113-256, including descriptions of all but the last 11 of the 135 species of Eucalyptus that Bentham recognised.

— I have not had another box packed because I do not like to return till I have done more as I so often find a few specimens that have by mistake slipped into wrong genera

After much consideration I think it more prudent to keep up (to include ) and (including ) as A. Gray has done. I think him a great authority on and if we unite these with we cannot keep out and passes very gradually into Conyza

makes I think a very good genus including and

includes and

Streptoglossa Steetz is DC which A. Gray had some time since indicated as a very distinct genus (it includes ). I also keep up your — these two are both very near and connect with . I think also and can be kept distinct. If we do not take up with rather shady characters in we must run nearly the whole tribe into one genus which I think would not facilitate the study of it. But of course everyone has his own ideas on this head. I observe you had and C. veronicaefolia as species of ( ) but I think the anthers obtuse at the base in Conyza and tailed in are a constant and ready character to separate these and connected with habit — although the same character is not good in

Yours very sincerely

George Bentham

Dr F. Mueller