Ferdinand von Mueller

1

Letter not found. The text given here is from 'Botanic Gardens', Gardeners' chronicle, 1 December 1883, pp 688-9 (B83.12.01). It has been dated to October as the latest likely date that it could have been sent to have been published in this issue.

The perusal of your leading article in the number for August 25

2

Unsigned editorial, p. 240.

gave me great pleasure, as I concur fully in the general views expressed by you on the distinct importance of botanic gardens, although I can hardly think that all Continental botanic gardens are so much behind the requirements of the times as your article would indicate.

3

The editors have interpolated '[We made exceptions]'.

Nearly forty years ago the botanic garden of the university at which I studied

4

Kiel.

gave away to the medical students, proportionally perhaps, as many fresh botanical specimens as the justly renowned botanic garden of Edinburgh now. But as pointed out in a lecture on the objects of a botanic garden (the print of which discourse was widely circulated) in 1871,

5

B72.07.02; the lecture was published in parts in the Gardeners' chronicle (see B72.08.01 &c).

and as also partly explained in my opening address delivered in the section for agriculture, horticulture and pastoral pursuits at the Social Science Congress in connection with the Melbourne International Exhibition,

6

B80.13.09.

the limits between real botanic gardens and ordinary public horticultural places are, as a rule, not distinctly drawn, the former being more essentially establishments for science, the others more particularly places for recreation and amusement, although the former may secondarily be pleasure gardens also, and the latter afford likewise secondarily some means for study. With this view, doubtless many Continental botanic gardens aim at scientific utility, mainly or even solely, more especially so as their scanty fund in most instances is quite inadequate to do more. If we would only recognise that true botanic gardens are primarily gardens plus science, while municipal gardens, cemetery gardens, &c., primarily are gardens minus science, then much about the competitive difficulties of these two classes of horticultural establishments would vanish, and in fairness no more would be expected from either of them than was intended, and each class would be left peacefully to its own proper pursuits, and not attempt to do both duties with conflicting interests and insufficient resources. You in your able article have touched some of the many points also already advanced by me, but much might be added to your remarks, and in venturing to make from a large experience of former years some further suggestions I beg it to be clearly understood at once that no one can be a greater advocate for esthetic and scenic culture also in botanic gardens, properly so-called, than myself. Pine arboreta on hill-slopes in the Melbourne botanic gardens, a geyser, fountains, ridgy islands with

Gynerium

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, Bamboo, &c., in the lake, a short Fern tree gully, rockeries, an aviary expanding into two wings over small trees, with a bridge and arched bower between, large glasshouses (the first in Australia), a

Victoria Regia

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tank,

7

See Maroske (1992).

an orchestra building, all this effected twenty or twenty-five years ago, bear or bore witness to this recognition of the ornamental claims in botanic gardens by myself even when water supply by gravitation was only scanty, and for years did not exist, and when, to speak with Pope, "the soil was stubborn."

8

A misquotation of Alexander Pope, Satires and epistles of Horace imitated , Book II, line 131: 'Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain'?

But to my mind, when a botanic garden is to fulfil its functions to the highest extent, the main planting should be ruled by strictly scientific principles, which procedure, however, need not exclude a few ornamental lawns, some little decoration in the way of flower borders, such as I saw in German gardens fully forty years ago, but which is costly and unproductive.

In old-established ground he who has to deal with the planting operations of a strictly botanic garden is probably hampered, because he likes to respect the work of his predecessors, as he expects his own work afterwards to be respected. But on new ground all planting should be performed on strictly scientific considerations. Thus I gradually, even on older grounds, rearranged the plants, geographically, systematically, and industrially. Nearly each part of the garden had in this way its distinct meaning; the larger portion of the area was devoted to geographic planting, for which in the warm temperate zone we have here, perhaps, ten times greater facilities than in northern or even middle Europe. Thus, North and South America had their own large areas, so also North and South Asia, North and South Africa, and North and South Europe, due scope being given to Eastern and Western Australia, also to New Zealand and Polynesia; and I found no difficulty in introducing at the same time the scenic elements, though I did not sacrifice old specimen trees foreign to any of the adopted geographic divisions of the grounds, but left them unlabelled to divert primary attention from them. This geographic arrangement I adopted nearly fifteen years ago in the Palm-house and smaller conservatory, inasmuch as the plants of the Western Hemisphere were kept on the western side of the building, the plants of the Eastern Hemisphere on the eastern side, and Northern and Southern plants again being placed respectively. It is obvious how easily plants are thus to be found, even by strangers, either in extensive open grounds or anywhere under glass. The systematic planting done in 1857 was strictly according to Jussieu's system, allied orders of plants coming into juxtaposition, and the whole forming a compact plantation, not a dissevered scattering of odd orders of plants over wide areas, with the loss of all facilities for comparison of the genera and species of cognate orders. Monocotyledons and Acotyledons were not planted for want of means at the time, and an improvement in the systematic arrangement could be effected by distributing the

Apetaleae

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(except the

Gymnospermeae

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), among the orders nearest to them in alliance. The industrial ground was not extensive, and my desire was to enlarge still more the division for grasses, medicinal, textile, tanning, and any other utilitarian groups of plants — a special work, which went through several editions, having purposely been written to promote the study of these plants;

9

B72.07.01 and subsequent editions.

but the respective plots were lined with different kinds of plants, fit for edging, to show the merit of each sort. Such rigorous method in planting over a large area did not exclude the grouping of numerous kinds of Oaks from various parts of the globe on one spot as a miniature Oak forest, nor did it prevent the collection of the species of the great genus

Acacia

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, also of

Ilex

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, and others; nor did it stand in the way of having each line of most of the main walks shaded with a particular species of tree, to exhibit the value of each for shade lines; nor was thereby the scenic effect impaired, although de gustibus non est disputandum.

10

In matters of taste there can be no disputes.

I could enlarge on many other important functions of a botanic garden, but within the limits of this communication I would only allude to the inestimable advantage of a botanic garden to a professional botanist. Many a great man in systematic botany would have been far less great had he not enjoyed the advantages of frequenting rich botanic gardens; in such, moreover, far more readily large herbaria can be accumulated than otherwise, though nulla regula sine exceptione .

11

There is no rule without exception.

Extensive phytographic writers perhaps occasionally forgot, or unconsciously never recognised, that they owe their main auxiliaries really to botanic gardens. Who among descriptive botanists was not glad to go from the herbarium to the class ground of the garden to study in Nature, comparatively, leaf-buds, preflorescence, location, and directions of ovules, dimorphism, colour of flowers, and a multitude of characteristics with ease, which in herbaria are traced with difficulty altogether or lost, not to speak of sacrificing specimens of dried plants, particularly if such are glued down. What monographer would not hail with delight a collection of the plants in cultivation coming under his review? — especially if the monograph pertains to trees, the bark, wood, habit, and defoliation, &c., requiring to be studied, as I myself most seriously experienced when endeavouring to deal satisfactorily with the Eucalypts. No; on this question of the high importance of real botanic gardens, for descriptive botany there ought to be only one voice. Then how is he on whom it may devolve to call forth or to foster new resources, to fulfil his functions, without living plants under his immediate care? Agriculture, forestry, technologic industries, pastoral concerns, designs truthful to Nature for artistic purposes, cannot much be advanced either by a herbarium or by simple pleasure gardening. Furthermore, how is the raw material for the technologist or phytochemic laboratory to be obtained readily except from a botanic garden worthy of the name? That such material cannot always be obtained from plants of decorative value must be evident, though thus far the unthinking portion of the public may, perhaps, cry down, even in a new country, any plant not decorative. Gardens, plain and simple, for amusement, or for pleasure walking, ought to be near the centres of populations; botanic gardens, on the other hand, should be more in quiet retreats. From the united action of leading botanic gardens in the world we may expect henceforth the issue of standard annual catalogues, based on intimate and special knowledge, for universal use, just as the annual nautical almanacs serve all navigators simultaneously. Could my wishes have been realised, we should have had also here, as recommended everywhere else, regular monthly reports, emanating also from our botanic garden, relating to temperature in its influence on thousands of reliably named specific forms in vegetation, referring to pathological data, bringing descriptive notes on new or rare plants arisen under local cultivation, setting forth the time of flowering and fruiting of multitudes of species, and dwelling on hundreds of the phenomena in plant life.