Ferdinand von Mueller

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MS found with a specimen of Gahnia microstachya (MEL 229751 4). The sheet bears M's 'Phytologic Museum of Melbourne' label, with in ink 'Derwent, Tasm. | 1892 L. Rodway', and in pencil 'Lepidosperma filiforme' crossed through, also in pencil. There is a later manuscript label 'Gahnia fitzgeraldi Rodw. | Benl, 1939'. See Benl (1940), pp. 245-6.

Hobart

June 10th /92.

Dear Baron,

Herewith Corysanthes that I have little doubt you will pronounce C. bicalcarata. It is strange it should occur on the East Coast of Tasmania & not in Victoria. Also the Cladium in good fruit. It appears to have the involute leaves of Gahnia but not the small flowering glumes nor persistant

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persistent?

filaments I feel sure it is new for Tasmania. Kindly give Wm Fitzgerald credit for having discovered them

Gahnia Fitzgeraldi . Plant densely coespitose.

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c aespitose? The MS contains a ligature , which could be read as either 'æ' or 'œ' ; Rodway (189 3 ) has the ligature 'œ' in 'c œ spitose ' , and our transcription follows that readin g .

Stems numerous from a creeping rhizome, about 2 ft. high, slender, terete. Outer leaves reduced to sheathing scarious scales, inner ones as long as or shorter than the stem with sharply involute margins & long subulate points gradually passing into the bracts subtending the branches of the panicle. Panicle 8 to 12 in. long, interrupted branches arising few together from distant bracts, unequal, usually elongated & erect bearing the spikelets freely distant from one another the whole panicle having a linear appearance, but sometimes they are short & contracted the spikelets then forming small distant rather dense heads. Spikelets numerous, dark brown, about 1½ lines long, more or less pedicelled, each subtended by a narrow aristate bract. Outer empty glumes about 4, slightly scabrous on the margins & mid-rib, more or less mucronate, seldom having a much elongated point. Flowers 2, the outer one male, the hermaphrodite

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Rodway (189 3 ) has 'the inner hermaphrodite'.

& an empty glume developed above the flower. Stamens usually 3, but in vigorous male flowers 4. Style branches 3. Nut about ¾ to 1 line long, ovoid-oblong dark, not differing in any detail from the nut of G. trifida & like it finely reticulated. Filaments partially deciduous, not supporting the nut as in allied species, the bases only remaining.

The plant has a similar but smaller habit to G. trifida, Lab. but it has a very dissimilar inflorescence & distinctly differently constructed spikelets, that species bearing a solitary terminal hermaphrodite flower. I submitted the plant to Baron von Mueller who considered it new but was too busy at the time to give it the attention required. Subsequently Mr Fitzgerald had occasion to correspond with F. Turner F.L.S. of Sydney who was not disposed to consider if specifically distinct. Since that I have made an exhaustive examination of a great number of specimens & with Baron von Muellers sanction & under our joint authority I have described it as above.

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Rodway wrote the description of Gahnia fitzgeraldi on a separate sheet, and from the content of the letter it would appear he wrote it later. It was published in Rodway (1893), pp. 82-3.