Ferdinand von Mueller

25/4/88.

1

MS is stamped: Royal Gardens Kew 4-Jun. 88.

This day, dear Sir Joseph, a trading horticulturist here sent me a flowering Dendrobium Sumneri, which gave me an opportunity of verifying the original description from a fresh living plant, and at the same time to settle, that your suspicion of D. Phalaenopsis being identical with D. Sumneri, was well founded.

2

J. Hooker to M, 15 August 1884 (in this edition as 84-08-15b), in reply to M to J Hooker, 25 June 1884 (in this edition as 84-06-25a).

Indeed the two cannot even be separated as varieties. What you caused to be depicted in the bot. Magazine 6817

3

Hooker (1865–1904), vol. 111, t. 6817.

is merely somewhat larger, though perhaps through cultured luxuriancy.

Will you kindly let Prof Dyer know this, so that the first name for this plant may be given to it also in the Kew Orchid House. Since I left the Garden I have very rarely opportunities to extend my researches to cultivated ornamental plants.

I had a kind letter from you last week,

4

J. Hooker to M, 4 March 1888.

concerning the labor involved in rearranging the genera of many great orders, an achievement, I know to appreciate. Indeed if you never had done anything else than writing your share of the "genera",

5

Bentham & Hooker (1862-83).

it would immortalize you! Remarkably enough, intervals of about 40 years were between all the great "genera plantarum", which Tournefort, Linnaeus, Jussieu, Endlicher and finally you and Bentham wrote. It is now nearly 30 years since you took up the genera. I am sure we all wish, you could crown your labours with a new edition of that great opus, embracing all the discoveries of the three last decades. — You allude kindly to the Royal Society having had brought under its cognizance, what I may have accomplished here; all I can say is, that I honestly did what I could in a new distant land, and as I have neither property nor family, I should regard any recognition from the great Royal Society now so late in my life all the more.

6

See also M to P. Sclater, December 1887. M was awarded one of the Royal Society's two Royal Medals for 1888.

this is the first centennial Jubilee year for Australia too!

7

i.e. the centenary of British settlement in Australia: ‘this is … Australia too!’ is a marginal note with the intended position indicated by an asterisk.

Lady Hooker sent me kindly an impression of your admirable speech given on the occasion, when you received the Societys highest bestowal.

8

Hooker received the Royal Society's Copley Medal at the Society's Anniversary Meeting on 30 November 1887.

Perhaps you and Lady Hooker will at the end of the summer be down in some part of the coast, and her Ladyship may help you to look for Cheno[le]a Hirsuta. As I found it on the Schleswig coast, nearly half a century ago, directly opposite the British, [often] in a glabrous form among Suaeda, you are sure to discover it also there, though the W. coast may be still more promising for finding it.

Mr Fitzgerald illustrated D. Smillieae & Sarcochilus Hartmanni

10

S. hartmannii?

also under new names, though well known in cultivation.

11

D. Smillieae as Coelandria smillieae (R. Fitzgerald (1875-94), vol .1 part 7, plate [2]), and describedSarcochilus Hartmanni as Sarcochilus rubricentrum (R. Fitzgerald (1880)) and illustrated it in R. Fitzgerald (1875-94), vol. 2, plate [3].

When the "Key"

12

B88.11.02.

shall be through the press, I shall come to the naming of Papuan plants again, and then make up a set for Kew.

Towards autumn the sometimes spiral twist of the Chenolea is most marked; the axillary minute tufts of hairs lead also to distinguishing it from Suaeda maritima, & of course the fruit altho' minute