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RBG Kew, Directors' letters, vol. LXXV, Australian and Pacific letters 1859-65, letter no. 188. 65.02.24c

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to William Hooker, 1865-02-24 [65.02.24c]. 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/1860-9/1865/65-02-24c-final.odt>, accessed June 13, 2026

24/2/65
It affords me, dear Sir William, great pleasure to offer you a few interesting contributions to your fern memoranda.
Cyathea medullaris

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has been found in Australia! It is a most reliable scientific observer, who brought it from the Cape Otway Ranges
1
Vic.
& there it is consociated with the, as we thought, endemic New Zealandian
Aspidium hispidum

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! You will further note, that
Marattia salicina

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has been gathered, as far as I am aware, for the first time in Australia, at Rockingham Bay. I have no doubt, that the N.E. coast, which Mr Dallachy now vigorously explores, is rich in Indian ferns, not yet known as Australian.
But that we can add to our few tree-ferns the noble
Cyathea

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has been quite charming to me.
The Great Meteorite for Prof. Maskelyne is gone by the Red Rover to the British Museum.
2
See Lucas et al. (1994).
The Ladies Committee, 16 Ladies delegated by the 8 great religious sections, is constituted.
3
The Ladies' Leichhardt Search Committee.
So a romantic & novel enterprise of the noblest kind will be instituted, and as a little tribute of the Ladies Expedition towards science we may expect to receive some plants. The whole scientific & intellectual world will watch the Ladies work & her emissary with deep interest. I am glad I succeeded; it was a bold step & will now probably for other grand philanthropic objects find imitation. I will send the papers bearing on the undertaking from time to time.
I am glad that your fern work, the great epitome of all knowledge of the system of ferns,
4
W. Hooker & Baker (1865-8). Only Part 1 of the work was published, on 24 July 1865, before Hooker's death on 12 August 1865.
is proceeding under your never tiring care. What a permanent boon to science such a work will be!
The sporangia of
Platyzoma

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break easily off, and I do not see them so regularly distributed as in some other
Gleichenia

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e, where they form — if we like to call them so — sori. But this of course is no character in the
Niphobolus

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section of
Polypodium

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.
I can see nothing but spores surrounding the sporangia & not a distinct powdery mass. I am grateful that I shall have the ferns again; and hope that the advantage of obtaining notes for your work will be in proportion to the trouble it involved to revise them.
5
A collection of ferns had been sent to Kew in April 1863 (M to W. Hooker, 15 April 1863, and M notebook recording despatch of plants to Kew for Flora australiensis, RB MSS M44, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne), and had been received back in Melbourne by the time that M to W. Hooker, 25 March 1865 was written. See also M to W. Hooker, 24 November 1864 (in this edition as 64-11-24d), for an apology for sending the specimens unsolicited.
With veneration
your
Ferd Mueller