Transcript
April 18/ [18]99
THE CAMP,
SUNNINGDALE.
My dear Prain
I have two letters & much else to thank you for of March 7 & 16. -- the superb consignment of excellent cigars; a packet of 7 Impatiens seed, & to day Gammie’s*1 Herb[arium] of Impatiens. The letter[sic] is a very fine set indeed, with many duplicates, & I suspect it represents the whole of his 1897/8 collections of the genus, totus & rotundus, duplicates & all! Of this you
April 18/ [18]99
THE CAMP,
SUNNINGDALE.
My dear Prain
I have two letters & much else to thank you for of March 7 & 16. -- the superb consignment of excellent cigars; a packet of 7 Impatiens seed, & to day Gammie’s*1 Herb[arium] of Impatiens. The letter[sic] is a very fine set indeed, with many duplicates, & I suspect it represents the whole of his 1897/8 collections of the genus, totus & rotundus, duplicates & all! Of this you
will be able to judge when I return them named to Calcutta. Assuredly many of the specimens should have been in Herb[arium] Calcutta. Most unfortunately the figure & description of the much mixed[?] Impatiens were published last month, I called it a var[iety] of Roylei, but from Gammie’s specimens, on which I find some subulate stipular glands, I cannot doubt it is the Sikkim I. sulcata Wall. -- a bad name, for the items are sulcate only in a dried state -- which throw me out.
I am still toiling & moiling at the Ceylon grasses, finding something to correct in Flor. B. Ind. -- as does Stapf*2 who I have had to ask to revise Eragrostis. As to the tribes & subtribes, they are simply hopeless, & what between Bentham*3, Hackel, & Stapf, I am at my wit´s ends in respect of some of them. Have you any ideas about Coix[?]? I find it difficult to separate gigantea from Lachryma now that Stapf puts my annual, calt. Khasia[?] one into the latter species! On to C. aquatica Roxb. -- has any one seen it with its [illeg.] or[?] floating
rootstock 50--100 ft. long; & I know of no species with the turbinate fruit which B. describes in gigantea. True[?] Watt. (Dict. In. Pl.)[?] describes the fruit of most of the genus as pyriform, but he must stand on his head to do so; some obpyriform is hardly accurate. Stapf has in Kew Bull[etin] 1888 insisted on the value of Roxburghs[?] character of Lachryma ♂ [male sign] spikulate[?] [illeg.] or gigantea ♂ ternate but I find in Herb[arium] a lot of specimens marked by himself ♂ sp. 2--3- nuts & so I find them to[stet] vague[?] -- Do not bother about this if you have nothing in your head about it. I suspect that Lachryma is a cult[ivated] form of gigantea, or vice versa.
Ever sincerely yours | Jos. D Hooker [signature]
Presumably George Gammie (1864 -- 1935) who worked as an assistant in Mungpu, India from 1881 to 1899 and went on collecting tours to Sikkim and the Brahmaputra Valley. His father James Alexander Gammie (1839 -- 1924) was also a famous botanist.
Otto Stapf (1857 -- 1933). Austrian botanist and taxonomist, based at Kew from 1890. Stapf wrote on the Gramineae (the grass family) in William Thiselton Dyer's edition of the Flora capensis (1898–1900).
George Bentham (1800 -- 1884). Nephew and heir to Jeremy Bentham. He collaborated with Joseph Hooker on the Genera Plantarum (3 vols 1862-1883) and donated his herbarium of more than 100,000 specimens to Kew.
Please note that work on this transcript is ongoing. Users are advised to study electronic image(s) of this document where possible.
Powered by Aetopia