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From Lucy Caroline Wedgwood   [6 June 1864]1

Monday

My dear Uncle Charles

I cannot give a very satisfactory answer, as many of the flowers have shed their seeds, but it is really quite easy to tell by the husk if there have been any:2 1st. They are seeding pretty freely, sometimes 6 or 7 fl. with seed to a head, I should think about half the flowers produce seeds. 2ndly. Far the greatest number have only one seed, but several have two and one I saw wh had had 33

How curious it looks seeing the teeth of this calyx carefully holding the seed in   I wonder why it does it—

Mamma4 is coming home today, she has been very unwell but I hope is better now—

Ever your affte. niece and lieutenant | Lucy C Wedgwood

CD annotations

Top of letter: ‘Pulmonaria officinalis.’ ink; ‘About [‘12’ del] the | 50 percent of [fl prod fruit.] other wh 2 seed & in one case 3 seeds’ pencil
Bottom of letter: ‘of my seedlings only 3 [over illeg] flowered & these all long-styled like parent, & perhaps from youth very moderately fertile indeed’ ink; ‘All seeded under net’ pencil 5

Footnotes

1
The date is established by the endorsement. The Monday before 7 June 1864 was 6 June.
2
The flowers were Pulmonaria officinalis (see CD annotations). No request from CD for information on the species has been found; however, CD had been interested in the fertility and heterostyly of Pulmonaria since 1863, and had corresponded extensively with his son William Erasmus on P. angustifolia in April and May 1864 (see, for example, letters from W. E. Darwin, 14 April [1864] and n. 1, and 12 May [1864], and letters to W. E. Darwin, [after 14 April – 5 May 1864], and 14 May [1864]).
3
See CD annotations at top of letter. CD evidently incorporated the observations made by Lucy Wedgwood at her family’s home at Leith Hill Place in Surrey into his own description of Pulmonaria officinalis in Forms of flowers; on page 102 he wrote that in the summer of 1864 he had seen some long-styled plants of P. officinalis ‘growing by themselves in a garden in Surrey’, and ‘about half the flowers had set fruit, several of which contained 2, and one contained even 3 seeds’. There is no record of a visit by CD to Surrey in 1864. CD began to receive botanical observations from Lucy Wedgwood and her two sisters, Katherine Elizabeth Sophy and Margaret Susan, in 1862 (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter from M. S. Wedgwood, [before 4 August 1862]).
4
The reference is to Caroline Sarah Wedgwood, CD’s sister.
5
CD’s annotations at the bottom of the letter record the preliminary results of experiments indicating that long-styled forms of Pulmonaria officinalis were self-fertile. See letter to Friedrich Hildebrand, 25 June [1864] and n. 8.

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.

Summary

Sends observations on seeds of Pulmonaria officinalis requested by CD.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-4523
From
Lucy Caroline Wedgwood/Lucy Caroline Harrison
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
unstated
Source of text
DAR 110: A60–1
Physical description
ALS 4pp ††

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4523,” accessed on 13 November 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4523.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 12

letter

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