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93.08.21c

Plant names

Preferred Citation:

Ferdinand von Mueller to the Editor, Erythea, 1893-08-21 [93.08.21c]. 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/1890-6/1893/93-08-21c-final.odt>, accessed June 4, 2026

1
Letter not found. The text given here is from 'Open letters. Indefinite stamens and subsessile pods in Cleome', Erythea , vol. 1 (1893), pp. 233-4 (B93.11.03). Given the context (see n. 6 below), it is probable that M's letter was edited.
When De Candolle in 1824 took up the
Capparideae

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in his Prodromus, and recognized
Polanisia

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as a genus, he knew but few species, and seems to have relied solely on definite stamens for Cleome and indefinite ones for
Polanisia

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. It seems that this character holds good for the North American plants; and when we think of the perfect validity of this character in
Cruciferae

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, we are led naturally into attaching undue importance to it in connection with the capparids. When in 1855 and 1856, I travelled widely with Gregory in tropic Australia, I had opportunity to observe that in Cleome tetrandra , while the stamens are never numerous, they are often more than four, and that in C. oxalidea they vary between six and eight; I have therefore since that time suppressed
Polanisia

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in my writings. In this I was followed by so careful and accurate an observer as Prof. Oliver, on far more extensive material from tropic Africa, in 1868; his
Cleome Bororensis

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having from six to ten stamens.
2
Oliver (1868-77), vol. 1, p. 81.
Even De Candolle did not consider the stipe of the fruit as a character of generic value in this family; and Martius, in the Flora Brasiliensis (1865), has on his fine plates C. paludosa, C. psoralifolia
3
C. psoraleifolia?
C.
4
Abbreviation for A. P. de Candolle who named this species?
and C. diffusa with but short stipes, and C. aculeata with this organ nearly obsolete.
5
That is, A. Eichler (1865a), plates 56, II; 57; 58, I and 58, II, respectively.
F. von Mueller,
Melbourne, Australia, Aug. 21st, 1893.
6
M's letter is followed by a comment by Edward Greene, the editor of Erythea, relating it to Greene (1893):
The above commentary relates to my article on page 114 of this volume, in which I suppress Robert Brown's Jacksonia after having restored that of Rafinesque; and Baron von Mueller's comments show that he wholly misapprehends the characters on which Rafinesque's Jacksonia is based … Neither the number of stamens nor the presence or absence of a stipe need be considered in discussing the merits of this genus as distinct from Cleome. It is I believe, also true that our Jacksonia (afterwards renamed
Polanisia

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by Rafinesque himself), is exclusively North American. It was De Candolle who extended the limits of
Polanisia

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to include Old World plants which, whatever else they have, do not possess the real characters of the genus.
Greene, signing as 'E. L. G.', concluded that 'the validity of the name Jacksonia, as the prior one, cannot be gainsaid'.
The details to which M refers were not in Greene (1893) to which Greene refers in his note, but in Greene (1891), pp. 173-4, where Greene discusses a diagnostic fruit character. He emphasised the same point in Greene (1892), p. 274, footnote, in his response to criticism by B. Jackson (1892) of his having 'revived some of Rafinesque's forgotten or condemned genera'.