Document information

Physical location:

RB MSS 439c, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 73.03.20

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to William Guilfoyle, 1873-03-20. 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/1870-9/1873/73-03-20-final.odt>, accessed May 10, 2026

Melbourne bot Garden
20/3/73
Some time since, dear Mr Guilfoyle, you sent me specimens of a new leafless Orchid Resembling gastrodia,
1
Resembling gastrodia is a marginal annotation by M with an asterisk to indicate its position.
which I laid aside for examination for the 6th vol. of the flora
2
Bentham (1863-78), vol. 6.
with some other orchideous plants.
I have now carefully dissected this remarkable plant, and find it to be a new species of the genus Epipogium, the only formerly known species
Epipogium Gmelini

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3
E. gmelinii ?
being very sparsely distributed over middle Europe and middle Asia, being as yet known only in one locality in England. I found
Epipogium Gmelini

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in Holstein in 1846, it being in that large Dutchy also only known on one spot.
Your plant I have now described and sent to print as
Epipogium Guilfoyli

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4
Contrary to what M says here, his published report of Guilfoyle's discovery of an Australian Epipogium , in Fragmenta , vol. 8, p. 30 (B73.03.02, published in March 1873), did not include a name for Guilfoyle's species. It did, however, include a statement that he was dedicating the species to its 'amiable discoverer'. It was no doubt this that prompted Bentham (1863-78), vol, 6, p. 308, citing M's report and a Guilfoyle specimen from the Tweed River, NSW, to give Epipogum guilfoylii as a synonym for E. nutans .
and you will be pleasingly now become aware that your honored name thus stands aside with that of the great Siberian scientific traveller,
5
S. G. Gmelin.
who detected
Epipogium Gmelini

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in N. Asia during the last century.
The miseries in my department through the enormous reduction of the votes still continues; but I spent with your friend
6
Not identified.
last Sunday evening & trust that finally my affairs will be so far improved again as to allow me to go on with progressive work, both cultural and literary, and that thus I may look with new hopes to the future.
Should you find more plants of
Epipogium Guilfoylii

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, then please secure such as rare treasure. I have just added the genera
Goodyera

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,
Georchis

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,
Eulophia

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and some other orchideous genera to the flora of Australia
Regardfully your
Ferd von Mueller.