Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The smallest orchid in the world', Gardeners' chronicle, 28 December 1878, pp. 817-8 (B78.12.03). It is dated to November 1878 as the latest that it could have been sent to have been published in this issue. The text is introduced by

Last week we were privileged to give a figure and description of the largest Aroid known, and which will probably turn out to be a Brachyspatha. Contrast its spadix, 6 feet long, and its leaf, covering an area of 45 feet, with the tiny Orchid with leaves and flowers each about one-eighth of an inch in diameter, mentioned by Baron Von Mueller in the following letter :—

More than twenty years ago the late W. S. McLeay showed to the writer a very minute creeping Orchid, from the vicinity of Port Jackson, highly remarkable for its extremely small disk-like leaves. The little plant in Mr. McLeay's conservatory was at the time not in flower, nor could subsequently any flowers be obtained, as the plant seems to have been lost. He told me, however, that he had examined it in a flowering state, and had found it to be a Dendrobium; hence temporary notice was taken of this singular plant as

Dendrobium minutissimum

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in the Fragmenta

2

B65.11.01, p. 95.

and also in the Flora Australiensis.

3

Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6, p. 277, in an annotation below the key to Dendrobium.

The plant was lost sight of until very recently Mr. Fawcett rediscovered it on the Richmond River,

4

NSW.

and forwarded fruiting specimens. At my request this zealous investigator of the Richmond River vegetation secured at last the flowers of this pigmy plant,

5

See M to C. Fawcett, 20 May 1878.

which prove it to be a true Bolbophyllum, to which the name B. minutissimum is now given. The leaves are sessile, on a creeping rhizome, often forming braadlike

6

Typesetter's error for beadlike?

series, on which account the name B. moniliforme might be employed for the species, as first adopted by Mr. McLeay, though that name is preoccupied in Dendrobium. The leaves are orbicular, flat, horizontal, and only one-eighth or one-sixth of an inch in diameter! Thus this Orchid has the smallest leaves of all in the whole order. Indeed, seeing the plant creeping among mosses, the observer might take it for a species of the

Hepaticae

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. The flowers are singly produced on peduncles hardly longer than the leaves, while the wee red flowers measure also only one- sixth of an inch. The affinity of this Bolbophyllum is with B. lichenastrum, but its dimensions are much less, and the disk-like leaves are thinly cartilaginous and adnate to the centre. While thus East Australia possesses the dwarfest of all Orchids, it counts among its plants also the one with minutest flowers, namely,

Oberonia palmicola

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.