Transcript
The Camp Sunningdale
July 11th/89
Dear Mr Ridley*1
I have been too long answering your very interesting letter of Feb 1, for which I thank you very much; & hope my dilatoriness may not prevent me from hearing again from you.
I should be glad to hear further about the Bromheadias of whose terrestrial habits I did not doubt; but then flowers had been so mixed up with Grammatophyllum, that this probably led Bentham*2 to doubt it. I have in suff[icient] for Fl[ora of] B[ritish] I[ndia]. species
1.B. palustris Ed[wards Bot Reg 4001; W h 1740
B. Finlaysoniana Rf in Walp. Ann [bot. Syst]. i.882
Grammatophyllum ? Finlaysoniana L.
Hab. Penang, Perak Molucca, Singapore, Sumatra, Philippines. It has many in few
2 B. aporoides Ref Ot[ia] Bot.44
Hab. - Tenasserim - a dwarf 1-2 flo. Heads
I shall hunt up the authority of the name palustris which from what you say must be a misnomer so serious that (pace ADC The Rules of Nomenclature)*3 it should be suppressed & Finlaysoniana substituted.. I have no sympathy with the worship of the letter rather
The Camp Sunningdale
July 11th/89
Dear Mr Ridley*1
I have been too long answering your very interesting letter of Feb 1, for which I thank you very much; & hope my dilatoriness may not prevent me from hearing again from you.
I should be glad to hear further about the Bromheadias of whose terrestrial habits I did not doubt; but then flowers had been so mixed up with Grammatophyllum, that this probably led Bentham*2 to doubt it. I have in suff[icient] for Fl[ora of] B[ritish] I[ndia]. species
1.B. palustris Ed[wards Bot Reg 4001; W h 1740
B. Finlaysoniana Rf in Walp. Ann [bot. Syst]. i.882
Grammatophyllum ? Finlaysoniana L.
Hab. Penang, Perak Molucca, Singapore, Sumatra, Philippines. It has many in few
2 B. aporoides Ref Ot[ia] Bot.44
Hab. - Tenasserim - a dwarf 1-2 flo. Heads
I shall hunt up the authority of the name palustris which from what you say must be a misnomer so serious that (pace ADC The Rules of Nomenclature)*3 it should be suppressed & Finlaysoniana substituted.. I have no sympathy with the worship of the letter rather
than the spirit of the laws of nomenclature which are being a nuisance from use misuse & from the*4 serious defect of AC refusing a "statute of limitation" in respect of changes of well known names for others dug out of catacombs, or even more unhallowed tombs.
The Malayan Orchids give me such a deal of most unsatisfactory work. By present rights the Flora of British India should not have extended beyond Moulmen*5 (Tenasserim) when the work was begun, the Straits Settlements belonged to India proper & as the Griffiths*6 & Wallich *7 collections had to be included I was bound to take them in. You have no end of work before you in the Orchd, Scitamineae, [word illeg] & especially Pandanaceae. As to the Orchid. The minute species are very numerous & very obscure - do very carefully dry flowers apart from the main specimens. The difficulty I am in with specimens that have withered before drying is immense. I am sometimes half an hour or more in laying out after macer boiling a single flower for description.
Amongst Scortechini's*8 Perak drawings are host of Orchids of which he has no specimen, & specimens so withered before drying that I can make nothing of them.- Scortechini was a most laborious collector, drawer, but
he fell between two stools - his drawings are not good enough to help much & his specimens are only bad. Add to this that there are no specimens for many drawings, no drawings of many specimens & that some are numbered [two words illeg.] corresponding with drawings & none are tidy [?] & given my conscience the worry they keep me in I have been now a month over the Vandeous [?] Genera Saccolab. Sarcochilus Sarcanthus, Cleistoma & the other allied small flowered things. They are in a terrible mess & I do not see my way through them. I soak & dissect & draw many specimens of each species. Reichenbach's*9 work is very bad; he often omits the most valuable dimensions; e.g.in Lepan[thes]lip - not stating whether a new species is mollifolious or [word illeg.]!; & his use of conventional botanical terms for shapes & of organs is misleading & he has not reformed or classified the species of a single genera of orchids. I had long mistrusted him, wonderful as I know his knowledge of species to be & now that I have followed his work I am shocked at his disregard of any thing but making
new species here there & every where with characters that defy utilization. His work is in a piece with the whole tenor of his orchid life. I knew him so long & so well that I never envisaged a hope that he would leave his herbarium to England. I thought it possible he might have destroyed it. He has known & felt all along that scientific botanists had no faith in his work, & that his reputation was with orchid growers & amateurs alone. It is not for me however to say before I am out of the wood but I can see that my orchid work will be very precursorial & full of oversights imperfections & I fear errors. Dendrobium [2 words illeg.] these results[?] work: I wonder what you will say to the new scheme for the grand divisions. Eria was a great labour, Bulbophyllum is another - Geodorum is impracticable for dried specimens. I am now at Coelogyne so perhaps a new arrangement into those with flowering from the top of the mature pseudobulb, & those that flower from the young unformed pseudobulb. I have not decided whether to make this character subordinate or not to that of those with sheaths below the infloresences? i.e. at the base of the word illeg only Of course I retain Pleione for the deciduous
leaved ones. There are a lot of splendid new large flowered species of Coelogyne from Perak that ought to be in cultivation. Penang is a wonderful place, novelties of all sorts turn up from it. Do bring [?] carefully drawn flower of Cirrhopetalum. They wither soon & are [word deleted] most difficult of analysis in dried specimens. I fear that the lateral sepals alter in form & colour during growth - I have found that the comparative length of the dorsal and lateral sepals is the best character to distinguish it from Bulbophyllum As a rule*10 Cirrhopetalum has dorsal sepals 1/4/-1/3 shorter than lateral - the latest always long & narrow. Of course there are intermediates & its distribution is artificial. The genera do modulate but it is one of those cases when so comparatively few are [word illeg.] doubtful [word deleted] both genera are so large that I am sure they are best kept apart as the whole for systematic numbering. The Calcutta collection of drawings of orchids has been invaluable I have with King's*11permission had all copied for Kew, about 400 - also I have had all Scortechini's (which are in pencil) copied. If you can get us copies of yours at a moderate rate, I do not doubt that the Herb[ariu]m would pay. With regard to naming your Herbarium could you not arrange with Dyer*12 that numbered sets of doubtful things are sent to Kew for naming by Hemsley *13 I am most grateful to you for telling me of the distinctions of these types [three words illeg.] which I can quite believe in; I have made a note
a note of it & shall I hope keep up the with the new genera in Fl[ora of]. B[ritish]. I[ndia].
Dendrob.longicolle ] Do I understand you that it is a native of Singapore? Or that it was introduced form New Guinea? I should suspect the latter to be the case for its form is Australian. I have given as the only authority "Singapore [word illeg.] Hort Loddiges" I have just printed off Dendrobium
I shall be curious to [word deleted] know where the division between the Peninsula and & Tenasserim Flora lies - no doubt there is some 'no man's land'.
But above all I envy you your trip to the mountains. Pray remember my prayer for small species with carefully dried flowers. It seems curious but I find specimens of orchids in spirits of less use than I expected. The flowers are so brittle & the pollen demoralized[?].
With regard to placing fat specimens in spirits before drying take care the flowers do not get too brittle & remember that the pollens are destroyed thereby, what I did was to leave them a day or
two in a [word illeg.] basin of water with a few ozs of Am [?] subl[imate] tied up in a muslin bag - this killed them, & then they dried quicker & insects [word illeg.] were shy of them afterwards. Take care that no man or beast drinks the water! I found cajeput oil of marvellous effect in starting insects out of bundles of drying plants & of boxes of dried specimens etc, before closing. The effect does not last, but "c'est le premier pas qui conte ". As now I must knock off again recommending the careful collection of small species with separately dried flowers where necessary i.e. when crumpling naturally takes place when the flowers are very delicate. I found it a good idea [?] to buy a pocket book of [word illeg.] paper in which to put a few flowers at once - to be placed along with the specimen when the latter is put between paper to be dried. | Ever sincerely yrs | J.D. Hooker[signature].
May I give you a hint - that it is useful in letter writing on plants to underline the names, genera & specifics of plants - it enables the reader on referring to the letter to get at a particular subject [word illeg.] with far less trouble in a long letter. Also do what I have word [word illeg.] not done I am sorry to say, that is: write only on one side of transparent paper like this!
P.S. On referring to Bromheadias I find that in that the specimens that Bentham used were few, very bad, & a [word illeg.] confusion of Dipodia & Grammatophylum together with Bromhedia this no doubt led to Bentham's doubts. I have endeavoured to unravel them but want good specimens with habit growth of all e.g.
Dipodium pictum (presumably dry land) --
· Paludosum ( -- swamp)
· Bromhedia palustris of which Linley says" dug out of a [two words illeg.] bog in Sumatra".
Grammatophyllum speciosum, fasstuosum & macranthum, the latter are I suppose varieties of speciosum.
1 Henry Nicholas Ridley (1855--1956). English botanist, geologist and naturalist who spent much of his life in Singapore, where he was the first Scientific Director in charge of botanical gardens. In this role he introduced rubber as a commercial product to Malaysia & improved the method of tapping. He explored widely around Penang & Malacca. He retired to England in 1911 and worked on a five volume flora of the Malay Peninsula, published from 1922 to 1925. In 1930 he published a seminal work on plant dispersal: The Dispersal of Plants Throughout the World.
2 Bentham, George. (1800-1884) Nephew and heir to Jeremy Bentham for whom he also acted a secretary. After his uncle's death he devoted himself to botany, especially plant classification. At the invitation of Sir William Hooker, he began work at Kew where he remained for 27 years. He collaborated with Joseph Hooker on the Genera Plantarum (3 vols 1862-1883) an influential work on plant taxonomy which is the foundation of many modern systems of classification. He donated his herbarium of more than 100,000 specimens to Kew. His Handbook of British Flora remained a standard work into the 20th century.
3 Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle (1806--1893). French-Swiss botanist. In 1855 he published Géographie botanique raisonnée, which had a significant impact upon Asa Gray. Among his other contributions is the formulation, of the first Laws of Botanical Nomenclature based on the work of his father, Augustin Pyramus de Candolle, for the latter's plant catalogue Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis. Alphonse's laws of nomenclature were adopted by the International Botanical Congress in 1867.
4 From * to end of paragraph is written vertically along right hand margin
5 Moulmen a port city on the Bay of Bengal was the capital of British Burma [Myanma] from 1826-1852
6 William Griffiths (1810-1845), born in Surrey, became Assistant Surgeon in Madras in 1832. He devoted his time to botany, travelling widely in Assam, Bhutan, Afghanistan and Malaya and published his travels. He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1840 and was Acting Superintendent of the Calcutta Botanic Gardens 1842-1844. His collections and some of his papers were deposited at Kew.
7 Wallich, Nathaniel (1786-1854) was born in Copenhagen where he studied medicine. In 1807 he became Surgeon to the Danish Settlement in Seramporen before beginning his association with the Calcutta Botanic Garden where he became an Assistant in 1809, acting Superintendent 1814-1816 and was Superintendent 1817-1846. He collected plants in Nepal, publishing his findings in 1824. His collection and some of his papers were deposited at Kew.
8 Benedeno Scortechini (1845-1886). Father Scortechini was born in Italy, became a priest and worked in Queensland, Australian from the 1871-1886. He was in the Straits Settlements in 1884 and died in Calcutta. He pursued studies in mycology and botany and became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1881.
9 Heinrich Gustave Riechenbach (1823 -1889), born in Dresden, became a botanist like his father Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach. After his studies and a time assisting his father, he became Professor of Botany in Leipzig in 1855, then Director of the Botanical Gardens at Hamburg University 1863-1889. He specialised in orchids from an early age and was responsible for identifying, describing and classifying many new species. His collections were bequeathed to the Naurhistoriches Museum in Vienna.
10 The following two sentences [As a rule…is artificial] are written vertically in the left-hand margin.
11 Sir George King (1840--1909) was born in Aberdeen where he studied medicine before joining the Bengal Medical Service in 1865. He took charge of the gardens at Saharanpur in 1868, then became Superintendent of the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta in 1871, a post he held until 1898; he also the first Director of the Botanical Survey of India 1891-1898. He became a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1860, of the Royal Society in 1887 and was awarded the Linnean Medal in 1901. He was recognized for his work in the cultivation of cinchona and for setting up a system for the inexpensive distribution of quinine throughout India through the postal system.
12 Sir William Turner Thiselton-Dyer (1843--1928). British botanist and third Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1885--1905). He succeeded Joseph Hooker in the role after serving as his Assistant Director for ten years. He previously held professorships at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, Royal College of Science for Ireland and the Royal Horticultural Society. He married Hooker's eldest daughter Harriet in 1877.
13 William Botting Hemsley (1843--1924) was born in Sussex. He trained in horticulture and botany at Kew where he became Herbarium clerk in 1865 and assisted Bentham with Flora Australiensis. After a period of ill health, he worked independently on Central American, Mexican, African and Chinese botany. He returned to Kew in 1889 as part-time, then principal assistant for India; from 1888 to 1908 he was Keeper of the Herbarium. He was elected to the Linnean Society in 1878 and to the Royal Society in 1889, when he was also made an honorary member of the Horticultural Society of Mexico. The Royal Horticultural Society awarded him a Victoria Medal in 1909.
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