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83.04.25

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

George Bentham to Ferdinand von Mueller, 1883-04-25. 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/1880-9/1883/83-04-25-final.odt>, accessed June 4, 2026

1
Letter not found. For the text given here, see B. Jackson (1906), pp. 253-4. Jackson does not give an archival source for the letter; since Bentham did not normally keep copies of his outgoing correspondence, Jackson's being able to quote it suggests it was never sent. There is no indication in M's surviving correspondence that he received it.
25 Wilton Place, London, S. W.,
April 25, 1883.
My Dear Sir, —
I have to thank you for your Systematic Census of Australian Plants,
2
B83.03.04.
received yesterday. The work is beautifully printed, and shows a great deal of laborious philological research into the dates of plant names (rather than of genera), which will be duly appreciated by those who occupy themselves with that subject, now much taken up; — but all that is not botany.
With regard to that science, it grieves me to think that you should have devoted so much of your valuable time to a work which, botanically speaking, is not only absolutely useless, but worse than useless. The interfering with established sequences of orders, without discussing in each instance the reasons for and against the doing so, is only producing confusion in the minds and collections of systematic botanists; and the wholesale amalgamation of genera, without any indication of the characters to be assigned to the new compound genus, or of its relations to allied genera retained as distinct, has no other effect than the unnecessary addition of many hundred names to the already over-loaded synonymy. I should much doubt whether you would find any one but a few of your immediate followers agree to placing
Passifloreae

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and
Cucurbitaceae

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between
Rubiaceae

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and
Compositae

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, and as to amalgamation of genera, there can be no great objection, beyond the multiplication of synonyms, in treating well-defined sub-tribes or subordinate groups as genera only, but the uniting
Olearia

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and
Celmisia

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with
Aster

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, to the exclusion of
Erigeron

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, would require for its justification a closer study of the numerous American, or Northern, nearly allied genera, than you have had the means of following up. If therefore, you wish to maintain the high position in which your name stands, let me entreat of you to give up the vain endeavour to attach the initials 'F. v. M.' to so many specific names, good or bad, as possible, and to devote your energies, your great abilities, and the splendid materials at your disposal, to the completion of such classical works as your
Eucalyptus

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3
B79.13.11 and subsequent parts.
and similar monographs of the great Australian genera, to the supplemental volume, or volumes of the Flora Australiensis,
4
No such supplemental volume was published.
or, above all, to a methodical digest of the copious and valuable data you have collected on the geographical distribution and relations of Australian plants.
With every wish that you may be enabled, like myself, to devote nearly sixty years of your life exclusively to botany, believe me, ever yours sincerely,
George Bentham.
Baron Ferdinand v. Mueller.