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Physical location:
Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide, SA. 81.11.03Preferred Citation:
Ferdinand von Mueller to Ralph Tate, 1881-11-03. 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/81-11-03>, accessed September 11, 2025
3/11/81.
Before the thought passes from my mind, dear Prof. Tate, I like to mention to you,
that it has never been ascertained, what Euc.
diversifolia of Bonpland
is, who raised it from seeds of Baudin's Expedition, gathered in Kangaroo-Island.
As the lower leaves are ovate and opposite and the upper alternate or scattered, it
may be a
young
state of an alternate-leaved species. The flowers are 5-8 in a head. There ought to
be no difficulty of getting specimens from your K. I.'s correspondents, at all events
fruit-specimens, as fruits are to be found on Eucalypts all the year round. We shall
probably have to discard the name of some other Eucalypt, to bring that of Bonplands
to honor again.
1
Eucalyptus diversifolia; see Bonpland (1813-7), pp. 35-7, t. 13, issued in 1814 (TL2).
2
SA.
3
The same request was made in M to R. Tate, 7 November 1881. In M to R. Tate, 1 January 1882, M identified two of Tate's specimens as
E. santalifolia
,
which
M had named in 1854 from specimens found at the Murray River and St Vincent and Spencer Gulfs, SA.
M gave Bonpland's name as a synonym in his discussion of
E.
s
antalifolia
in
Eucalytographia, eighth decade (B82.13.17), issued by April 1882 and reviewed in
Sydney mail and New South Wales advertiser, 22 April 1882, p. 622, but noted that it had to be 'discarded … because the plant
as defined by him represents that very young state in which … the leaves pass from
the broad form of juvenile plants into a narrow shape of the leaves, normal for adult
trees'.
Bonpland's name has priority and M's name has been sunk into synonymy.
Anyhow it is very desirable, that your friends on the Island should pay early & special
attention to the
Eucalypts
.
I have not heard from the Rev. Mr. Kempe for a long time. So there must be also drought
in his district.
Surely the S.A. Government is sending out a small Camel-party to the actual death-place
of Leichhardt in
your
territory, to erect a small monumental cairn, & bury the bones of the unfortunates.
You could have there no abler man than Mr Tietkens, for such a holy mission, as Mr
Giles
is otherwise engaged. Can
you
take up this cause.
4
M is probably referring to claims that Leichhardt relics has been found west of the
Mulligan River in far-western Qld, and therefore in the Northern Territory, then administered by SA; see Lewis (2013), pp. 262ff.
5
Ernest Giles. Ericksen (1978) has very little detail about Giles's activities in this period, other
than that he 'resumed, in South Australia, the work of searching for pastoral land', although pp. 258-9 contain a brief mention of his efforts to raise the funds he needed to stock the land with which he had been provisionally rewarded
by the SA Government. In 1881 he disposed of his interest in a pastoral lease in the Musgrave Ranges 'with
the
view to the formation of a joint stock company to stock the land
' (
Hamilton spectator
, 25 October 1881, p. 2).
By 1883 he was able to show maps of 'the new country taken up by him on the Ferdinand
Creek, near the Musgrave Ranges. … to be stocked and afterwards re-sold by a syndicate'
(
Hamilton spectator
, 28 April 1883, p. 2).
This
may have been still a
sp
ec
ulation
as he was attempting to interest English capitalists in it as a pastoralist investment
(
Argus
, 14 February 1883, p. 9).
Regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller.
Eucalyptus diversifolia