Document information

Physical location:

RBG Kew, MR/603/5, 'Circular from Colonial botanist'. 63.00.00b

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to John C. Brown, 1863 [63.00.00b]. 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//letters/1860-9/1863/63-00-00b-final.odt>, accessed June 13, 2026

1
Letters not found. The text given here is from 'Circular from Colonial Botanist relative to South African Plants desired by the Directors of Botanic Gardens in Eupope and elsewhere' dated 20 February 1866. Brown included references to and direct quotations from a number of his correspondents. These quotations are not dated. Letters must have been received between 1863, when he was appointed Government Botanist, and the end of 1866, when his post was abolished. Nor is it known whether the quotations came from one or several letters of the named correspondents.
The extracts given here refer to communications with M and are given in the order in which they appear in the circular, which may not correspond to the order in which they were received.
The circular begins
In several communications which I have received since I came to the Cape from [various people including] Dr Mueller, Government Botanist and Director of the Botanic Garden at Melbourne, ... desires have been expressed for roots, bulbs, or seeds of as great a variety of South African plants as possible. And I write to request your co-operation in endeavours to meet their wishes.
[More than one of these gentlemen has promised plants, cuttings or seeds, if they be desired, in return. Dr. Hooker, Dr. Mueller, and Dr. Smith have in this measure taken the initiative by sending to me, with their application, seeds which they considered might be acceptable to myself or my friends....
From Dr. Mueller, Government Botanist at Melbourne, there have been received and distributed throughout the Colony, seeds of about fifty species of New Zealand and Australian herbs and trees, most of them newly-discovered species. To him also were sent collections of seeds similar to what were transmitted to Kew.
2
i.e., 'seeds of about fifty different species of of herbs, shrubs and trees, growing within and beyond the eastern frontier'.
And the Superintendent of the Cape Town Botanic Garden was requested by the Commissioners of that institution to forward to him also a selection of South African succulent plants and cones of the
Pinus pinea

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and P. pinaster, in accordance with a wish expressed by him.]
3
p. 1, col. a.
[At Melbourne are desired specimens of all our useful and ornamental plants, and more especially of
Staphelia

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s,
4
Stapelia? Styphelia is a common misspelling of the genus name, often found in gardening literature.
Cape bulbs, Mesembryanthema, aloes and succulents of every kind in regard to which Dr Mueller writes: "if merely packed dry in crushed charcoal, in an ordinary case, such a consignment may be safely transmitted as dead goods." Besides these he specifies Heaths,
Compositae

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, or Aster-like plants, and
Geranium

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s or Pelargonia as plants he is desirous of rearing; and he wishes seeds of the Spardenny and Crondenny, in return for which he offers Californian and Himalayan pines.
... "Of pines," he writes to me: "We have, except
Aracauria

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5
Typesetter's or transcriber's error for Araucaria?
and
Callitris

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, little in Australia. You have planted them largely, and I have also endeavoured to distribute them extensively here; not less, indeed, than 120,000 were distributed by me within a few years. But in a newly colonized country we can never have enough of these noble trees for our public reserves, avenues, churchyards, cemeteries, school places, &c. In the domain adjoining the garden I planted about 8,000 pines from all parts of the globe,
6
See M to J. McCulloch, 30 September 1865.
and I raised 43,000
Pinus pinea

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,
7
Brown interpolates here '[stone pine or Kromdenny]'.
from a quantity of seeds gathered in the vicinity of Cape Town, and fine plants they proved. Would it not be possible to get a bagful of these valuable seeds, which must be abundant in your avenues, as those I allude to were collected in a brief space of time by a passenger touching at the Cape on his way to Australia?"]
8
p.2, col. b.