The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: 16/8/86 ¶ ¶ This day's mail, dear Prof. Oliver, brought me your kind letter of the 3th July, enclosing a single flower and leaf of a Swainsona. ¶ It would be hazardous to offer an opinion thereon, w...

Document information

Physical location:

RBG Kew, Archives, Miscellaneous correspondence. 86.08.16

Plant names

Acacia
Search for Acacia in
Astragalus
Search for Astragalus in
- This website
- Australian Plant Name Index
Leguminoseae
Search for Leguminoseae in
- This website
- Australian Plant Name Index
Swainsona
Search for Swainsona in

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to Daniel Oliver, 1886-08-16. 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/1880-9/1886/86-08-16-final.odt>, accessed June 4, 2026

MS found with a specimen of forrestii; MS is accompanied by a note giving its provenance. This specimen was sent to Kew from Botanic Gardens, Hull, collected July 1886; the letter was removed from the specimen folder to Kew archives in 2005. 3

16/8/86

This day's mail, dear Prof. Oliver, brought me your kind letter of the 3th July, enclosing a single flower and leaf of a .

D. Oliver to M, 3 July 1886.

It would be hazardous to offer an opinion thereon, worth having, as this genus is one of the most difficult for discriminating its specific forms, more particularly so, as the material, from which the great Bentham elaborated the species was 22 years ago still so very imperfect. Since then my collections of Australian became about threefold enlarged, and many of the species can from the larger series of specimens now much better be defined than then. This I find particularly also in illustrating now lithographically select e.

I added seven good species to , since the Flora Austr. vol. II. was published, and some more may yet lurk concealed; but without seeing ripe fruit it is impossible to do justice to any of these plants, just as in the huge genus , so nearly allied. Perhaps the plant in the Hull bot. Garden will ripen fruit, when the species could be more readily determined. It was my intention, to revise the whole genus since some time; I commenced to do so twice or thrice; but always so much report-writing, correspondence, calls at my office for information &c. intervened, that I never could complete the task, it requiring even with the large mass of material now here the spare-hours of several weeks.

Regardfully your

Ferd. von Mueller.

The fresh color of the petals is a good characteristic; but in drying often lost.

Paragraph is a marginal note on p. 1 of folio.

Dr Wawra figured a as new in the vol. of the "Reise der Prinzen v. Coburg-Gotha".

Paragraph is a marginal note in the centre and left margins of the back of the folio. See Wawra von Fernsee (1883), pp. 6-7, tab. 1, fig. A, murrayana.