Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton
JHC760
The Camp, Sunningdale, Berkshire, United Kingdom
HNR/2/1/3 f.96
Ridley, Henry Nicholas
The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
15-5-1890
© Descendants of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker
Letters to H. N. Ridley
The Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
English
Original MS
4 page letter over 1 folio
 
Transcript

England, to Kew I suppose: & I so hope we shall flower it - - for it must be a curious plant.  I sent you a list of the 17 orchids that came back from you. I am now at Habenaria & am very much puzzled with the small species of the Peristeria section. You sent two, 2015, & another without a number. I have not determined them as yet.  May 26th Yours of April 24th just arrived. I am very much interested in what you tell me of the Cypripedium growing in sand under Panderia! What an overthrow of all [word illeg] ideas of the localities of the genus! I shall submit your notes on the PanderiaScitaminea to Mr Baker & ask him for answers that I may enclose to you. He has gone through the Indian species, but will not complete them till he gets the Calanthe drawings etc.

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May15/[18]91 THE CAMP SUNNINGDALE
Dear Mr Ridley*1,
I enclose the name of an Alpina which Mr Baker*2 who is doing the order for The Fl[oraI'm  of] B[ritish] I[ndia] has named. I see you have published a new Calanthe in Gard[eners] Chron[icle] - - which puzzles me much. You put it in Preptanthe & describe the lip as adnate to the base of the column, & its'[sic] lateral lobes erect & appressed to the face of the column. I did should not regard these characters as those of Preptanthe I do hope you will send me some flowers. If you publish without consideration of what I am doing, we shall sure to get to Cross purposes.     I see that you have sent pseudobulb to

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England, to Kew I suppose: & I so hope we shall flower it - - for it must be a curious plant.  I sent you a list of the 17 orchids that came back from you. I am now at Habenaria & am very much puzzled with the small species of the Peristeria section. You sent two, 2015, & another without a number. I have not determined them as yet.  May 26th Yours of April 24th just arrived. I am very much interested in what you tell me of the Cypripedium growing in sand under Panderia! What an overthrow of all [word illeg] ideas of the localities of the genus! I shall submit your notes on the PanderiaScitaminea to Mr Baker & ask him for answers that I may enclose to you. He has gone through the Indian species, but will not complete them till he gets the Calanthe drawings etc.

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I am still very much puzzled by Ridleya & hardly like to establish a genus on one flower's dissections, & the general resemblance to some Sarochilii inflorescences is strong. I do hope that you will get more of it. I should be very sorry to name an orchid after you & have to abandon it afterwards, so pray keep a good look out for more. I too am very much disappointed at the exped[ition] to Gunung Patch/ Tahan not coming off, I hope that it is only delayed. I have sent a lot of orchids to press of vol V- -I but am still in great doubts about several genre of Vandeae. I am in a great mess with Luisia & cannot unravel various the species of & make the old names fit.  I should be glad of a Singaporean specimen of Lip.[aris] nervosa I enclose a duplicate of the last orchids sent 

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Yrs very sincerely|JosDHooker[signature]

ENDNOTES

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 John Gilbert Baker (1834-1920) was born in Yorkshire, studied at Quaker schools then began work in the Library and Herbarium at Kew in1866. He became a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1866, of the Royal Society in 1878 and was Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew 1890-1899. He published on a wide range of plant families as well as a Flora of Mauritius and the Seychelles (1877).
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