The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: 21/10/90. ¶ ¶ Am rejoycing, dear Mr Dyer, that your health improved in the light alpine air, in which respiration and oxygenation are so facilitated. There is a particular charm about ¶ alpine ¶ ve...

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Physical location:

RBG Kew, Kew correspondence, Australia, Mueller, 1882-90, ff. 328-9. 90.10.21

Plant names

Alsophila
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Cycadeae
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Zamia
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- Australian Plant Name Index

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to William Thiselton-Dyer, 1890-10-21. 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/90-10-21>, accessed September 11, 2025

21/10/90.

Date stamped: Royal Gardens Kew 2. Nov. 90.

Am rejoycing, dear Mr Dyer, that your health improved in the light alpine air, in which respiration and oxygenation are so facilitated. There is a particular charm about alpine vegetation, such a freshness and such restrictedness! It is well, that your health should be of the firmest, for your responsibilities as well as your toil must always be great.

I learnt with great interest your success in "amputation" of -stems. That is quite a horticultural discovery! They are wonderful plants, these , for tenacity of life! I had stems 4 years dormant in a Warm-House before sprouting; — others had them double that time apparently lifeless, when they suddenly burst into leaves!

Always regardfully

your

Ferd. von Mueller.

Private

After Bailey

i.e. Frederick Manson Bailey.

learnt from Kew something of the affinity of the euphorbiaceous climber, he at once without hesitation adopts the American genus and rushes the plant into print.

Omphalea queenslandiae, Bailey (1889), p. 58. Bailey states, p. 59, that it was described from incomplete material.

All his work is crude and superficial. A Bamboo, which I knew for 30 years, and of which I had leaves for some years, he at once describes as new,

Bambusa moorheadiana, Bailey (1889), p. 71.

from leaves alone, without the slightest critical study and without any means of fixing the genus. I have never found any Botanist so rashly "rushing into print" on insufficient data, then him. This makes working with him very troublesome and unsatisfactory in many instances. His material in Brisbane is quite insufficient for critical research, and yet he is singularly self-sufficient. Help from here would be but little acknowledged. It does not take him much time to describe plants, as he "jumps hurriedly to conclusions" Many gross errors occur in his dealing with the Bellenden-Ker Mt

Qld.

plants; it was I, who directed his attention to the temperate flora there, of which he had no idea before[.] He places the same species of ferntree into two sections of the genus .

A. rebeccae and A. capensis, Bailey (1889), p. 74.