Dear Oliver

My sister-in-law sent me several specimens dried of Lythrum hyssopifolium to compare with the fresh specimen, which you kindly sent me,² & amongst them was the enclosed: it is clearly not L. hyssopifolium or L. salicaria: it has 12 stamens, large petals, smooth calyx, & flowers not in whorls. Could you find out its name?³ I fancy the genus is not large. It is a European specimen. The specimen sent answers to the “short-styled” in L. salicaria, but differs in many important respects. The stigma of “mid-styled” would not project beyond the calyx, & this perhaps led old Vaucher (who always blunders when that is possible) to assert that some species are dimorphic like Primula.⁴ It would be a very interesting aid to me if you could name this species for me, & at same time, when you find the specimens in the Herbarium, (if the species be not rare) pluck off a single young unopened flower from a few specimens, as I sh^d. very much wish to compare the pollen of the two sets of anthers in the “long-styled” or “mid-styled” form of this new species.⁵

I hope you will not think me very unreasonable to ask all this; for I hope & believe that the species of Lythrum are not numerous; & I have been much perplexed, how any of the species could be dimorphic, as old Vaucher says.—

Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin