Document information

Physical location:

83.04.00

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to the Leader, 1883-04. 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/83-04-00>, accessed September 10, 2025

1
Letter not found. The text given here is from 'Agricultural notes', Leader (Melbourne), 14 April 1883, p. 9 (B83.04.09). It is introduced by 'Mention has been made in articles on the Baringhup district [c. 25 km NW of Castlemaine, Vic.] which have appeared in recent issues of this journal of a kind of hybrid thistle which is spreading very much over that district. A sample plant was sent to Baron Von Mueller, the Government botanist, who informs as that: '
The prickly, somewhat thistle like, weed submitted to me for examination is a narrow leaved and small flowered variety of
Carthamus lanatus

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, which must have found its way to us from one of the countries on the Mediterranean Sea, in all of which it occurs, ranging besides eastward to Southern Russia, southward to Abyssinia, westward to the Canary Islands and northward to Switzerland. Usually the plant is larger in all its parts than the one sent to me, and as such I received it formerly once from the neighborhood of Stawell. I have in our collections, however, specimens quite as meagre as the one under notice from Mount Carmel, of Biblical history, where in a cavern the Prophet Elijah bad his habitation. Should this spurious kind of safflor
2
Safflower.
be inconveniently spreading, then it should be cut before ripening its seeds, or, better still, before it comes into flower, as by these means it will die out, being annual or biennial.