Ferdinand von Mueller

Private

1

Annotated in red pencil under ' Private ' : Sir JDH.

25/7/85

I like to mention to you, dear Mr Dyer, that Ottelia ovalifolia does not grow within 100 miles of Melbourne; and as I have no garden whatever, I cannot observe it in cultivation. You will be therefore now with the growing plant before you in a much better position, to describe the particulars of its dimorphism than I ever had.

2

See W. Watson (1883) for an account of the plants growing at Kew; however, this does not mention dimorphic flowers. M details them in B86.06.04.

I was wondering why so nice and remarkable a plant was not at once figured in the bot. Magazine, after all the trouble I took in putting Kew into possession of it, and before it flower[s] elsewhere.

3

The species was not depicted in the Botanical m agazine. An illustration, said to be 'from a drawing made by' M, accompanied B86.06.04.

Mr Fitzgerald seems with his species of Orchids fast to drift into Jordanism;

4

Robert Fitzgerald.

'Critical botany … has … been exaggerated by Alexis Jordan and his followers into an impracticable and futile extreme' (B. Jackson (1881), p. xxxviii).

see his numerous new species of Prasophyllum even from the long-trodden ground in N.S.W. He spoils his work by the ill differentiation of the species and his want of true appreciation of the specific limits, the faulty etymology e.g. Dendrobium falcirostrum

5

D. falcorostrum ? ( R. Fitzg erald ( 1876 ) ) .

Sarcochilus rubicentrum,

6

S. rubricentrum ? (R. Fitzgerald (1880)).

which more-over is the well known here much cultivated S. Hartmanni[!]

7

M described S. hartmanni in B74.10.01, p. 248.

I saved him from making of the N.S.W. Adenochilus a new genus; he does not know of Blume's Pedilonum, and establishes after the reduction of that again a new genus Coelandrium!

8

Coelandria? ( R. Fitzgerald (1875-94), vol. 1 part 7, plate [2]).

A Gentleman here, who is a good judge, call his illustrations, excellent as they are in other respects, "hazy" and certainly there is a want of sharpness of expression, which the darkness of the paper makes worse. The coloring is often poor, He is sulky with me, his first "Maitre", for not adopting all his species downright for my Census,

9

B82.13.08 and subsequent additions.

and he stands alone in not preserving any dried specimens either for himself or others.

I don't believe in the validity of his Dendrobium Phalaenopsis

11

I don't ... Phalaenopsis written in central margin, f 155 back. The species was published in Fitzgerald (1880).