Ferdinand von Mueller

The 19th century nomination forms of Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society have not been preserved, so it is not known who M nominated as Fellows, or how many he nominated. However, in the unsigned obituary of M published in the Gardeners' chronicle, 17 October 1896, pp. 464-6, it is stated (p. 466) that

One illustration of his zeal for horticulture is shown in the great numbers of Fellows of the Royal Horticultural Society who were proposed by him. The Society, indeed, owes no little to the unselfish action of Baron Von Mueller, who, when the Society threw off South Kensington shackles, and started on its career of pure horticulture, expressed his sympathy in the way just mentioned. Indeed, in the last letter received from him shortly before the telegraph brought news of his death, there was a proposal-form for the election of yet another Australian Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society.

The obituary was probably written by Maxwell Masters, the editor, as elsewhere in the biographical memoir it is stated

Von Mueller was a most voluminous correspondent. For nearly forty years, the present writer has been in correspondence with him, and of late years hardly anything has happened with such regularity as the receipt on every Monday morning of one or more communications of some kind from Baron von Mueller. Two or three such communications were received weekly on the average, but the number has occasionally mounted up to as many as seven and even nine! The last of these communications utilised in this journal was one on a new Musa from New Guinea, printed in our last issue, p. 360 [B96.09.01]. Since then, indeed, on Monday last, we received an original sketch of the inflorescence of this plant (fig. 85), which we now reproduce on p. 467, not only for its own sake, but in memoriam (p. 466).

The MS letters have not been found, but where extracts have been published they have been included in this edition.