The correspondence of Ferdinand von Mueller: 5/12/91 ¶ ¶ Since some days I owe you an answer to your last kind letter, dear Miss Henley, but I had to concentrate most of my time lately on elaborating a report on Sir Will. Macgregor's plants fro...

Document information

Physical location:

RB MSS M32, Library, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. 91.12.05

Plant names

Aldrovanda vesiculosa
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Mesembrianthemum
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Swainsona monticola
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Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to Maria Henley, 1891-12-05. 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/1890-6/1891/91-12-05-final.odt>, accessed May 7, 2026

5/12/91

Since some days I owe you an answer to your last kind letter, dear Miss Henley, but I had to concentrate most of my time lately on elaborating a report on Sir Will. Macgregor's plants from British New Guinea, recently collected.

B92.03.01.

So any correspondence, not very urgent, had to be laid meanwhile aside. It was again very good of you, to support the second show of native flowers. The Swainsona, kindly sent by you, is new for Victoria, and as such shall for the locality there be recorded in my works under your honored name, but it is not new — so I find now — from the fruiting specimens for science, it being the S. monticola of N.S.W., rare also there.

See Victorian naturalist, vol. 8, no. 9 (January 1892), p. 131, where, in the report headed 'Exhibition of specimens', Swainsona monitcola is listed from Wangaratta, collected by 'Miss Henley', as 'new for Victoria'.

Let me thank your worthy parents and yourself for the kind invitation to your hospitable home; but I have to visit Sir Thomas Elder in the interest of Baron Nordenskiold's antarctic expedition this month in Adelaide, and have in January to attend (as the Melbourne President) the Austral. Assoc.

The Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. M had been President of the Association’s congress in Melbourne in January 1890.

in Hobart; so I shall not likely be able to make any other tour for a considerable time

If you or some members of your home should visit Melbourne, I will gladly call on them or see them at my poor place, St Kilda-Road, near the Church of Engl. Grammar School.

M's house in Arnold Street was just off St Kilda Road, close to Melbourne Grammar School.

The fruits of , now fresh dried, contain each many seeds for sowing. This plant ought for pastural purposes to be widely disseminated over Australia, as you will notice also from my remarks in the "Select plants"

The most recent edition was B91.09.01.

With regardful remembrance your

Ferd. von Mueller

Can you kindly send a good supply of fruiting specimens of the for foreign interchanges? Floating or submerged weeds in small pressed and dried specimens are still very much desired from your whole district . In all probability it could be shown by an exhaustive search, that and some others are also natives of Victoria.