The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: ¶ [Acacia Melanoxylon, the celebrated Black-Wood of Australia, used in the manufacture of railway coaches, interior finish, etc. These seeds were ordered from and selected by Baron Von Mueller, of Me...

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Physical location:

72.00.00b

Plant names

Acacia Melanoxylon
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Eucalyptus
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Preferred Citation:

[…] to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1872 [72.00.00b]. 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/1870-9/1872/72-00-00b-final.odt>, accessed June 9, 2026

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'The ', New Orleans bulletin, 28 November 1875, p. 3. The article begins

A distinguished firm of seedsmen and florists of San Francisco recently received from Udolpho Wolfe & Co, of New York, an order for seeds of sundry varieties of the or Blue Gum Tree, other wise known as the Tasmanian Fever Tree. When filling the order, the senior member of the firm wrote an interesting letter, noting facts relative to the , which may be interesting to many of the readers of the Bulletin.'

The article contains a list of species together with 'Casuerina (sic) suberosa' and the Acacia melanoxylon comment extracted here.

The San Francisco firm that ordered seed from M and supplied Wolfe & Co has not been identified. Their letter to M is tentatively dated to no later than 1872, on the basis of the quoted comment in the article that 'I have [ ] trees less than three years from the seed, now twenty-five to thirty feet high and twenty to thirty inches in circumference', and the assumption that these were grown from early seeds obtained from M.

[ , the celebrated Black-Wood of Australia, used in the manufacture of railway coaches, interior finish, etc. These seeds were ordered from and selected by Baron Von Mueller, of Melbourne Botanical Gardens, from the healthiest and most symmetrical trees which could be found.

…

I have been raising the [ ] trees by the 100,000 and have tried in all ways all seeds. The most complete success I have had, has been from seed selected for me by Baron von Mueller, at Melbourne, on direct order.]