Document information
Physical location:
RB MSS 439c, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 69.03.18a
Plant names
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Bixa Orellana
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Bixa Orellana
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Preferred Citation:
Ferdinand von Mueller to William Guilfoyle, 1869-03-18 [69.03.18a]. 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/1860-9/1869/69-03-18a-final.odt>, accessed May 15, 2026
Melbourne bot Garden
18/3/67
1
sic. The contents make it clear that this letter was actually written in 1869. Guilfoyle
visited the South Sea islands, May-October 1868, and M proposed him for membership
of the Linnean Society in 1869 (see M to R. Kippist, 18 March 1869).
The fruit, enclosed in your letter
just received, dear Mr Guilfoyle, is that of the Arnetto-plant (
). Soon after the discovery of America this shrub was transferred to India, and now
it is under cultivation through many parts of the tropics. The pulp, surrounding the
seeds, is the Arnetto, now so universally used as a dye.
2
Letter not found.
Bixa Orellana
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It is very kind of your worthy father to spare me, as he intends, some of the treasures
you brought with you from the S. Sea Islands. I will gladly send anything in exchange,
that may be acceptable from here. New Guinea could only be examined by a bot. collector
from a mission station at its shores. To obtain the mountain and especially the alpine
plants, it would perhaps be possible to get the natives to bring them down to the
mission station at so much the hundred different kinds. It would not be safe for a
solitary traveller to go inland. I think if a young man with some little capital joined
any future mission station there for a year he would sell his collections well, as
he could supply all the large Governments in different countries with portions of
his gain.
The flowers of the Bixa are highly ornamental. So it will be to your fathers place
an acquisition. I cultivate it in my conservatory for several years, but it has not
yet flowered.
It will afford me very much pleasure to propose you by next mail a Fellow of the Linnean
Society, and I am certain that with your great ardour and facilities of research you
will distinguish yourself as a Linnean Disciple.
With best thanks for your gratulation
and compliments to your father
3
M's appointment as Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George was announced
in Australian newspapers—for example, in
Sydney morning herald
, 26 February 1869, p. 9—before the official warrant, dated 24 April, was issued.
Ferd. von Mueller