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To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer   24 March 1879

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.

Mar 24th/79

Dear Dyer,

I am going to give you a frightful amount of trouble. I have made many observations on the Cassia sent by Post at same time & much want its name. It grows on sea shores in St Catherina Brazil; I suppose it is an annual for on a former occasion several seedlings flowered when only a little larger than that now sent. If it should prove a new species could you get any body to name it, as I have to refer to it so often.1

Secondly I received several years ago from Kew a Sida, and as far as I can read the name on the label it is S. corylifolia.2 Is this the name of the enclosed branch? At the same time I received a plant under the name of Sida retusa (since dead) but I can find no such name in Steudel: did you ever have a Sida retusa?3

Can you tell me the native country of Pharbitis nil.4

There are several plants and seeds which I want for experimental purposes; but on several former occasions, when I have asked for such things, you have taken far too much trouble in endeavouring to get them. Pray do not do so on this occasion, but if you happen to have them at Kew I should be grateful for the loan of the plants & for any of the seeds in the accompanying list.

I well know it must be a chance whether you can aid me.—

Ever yours sincerely | Ch. Darwin

Plants

Passiflora punctata

Clematis viticella var venosa

Lonicera brachypoda These I had several years ago from Kew5

Phyllanthus niuri

Anoda Wrightii

Gossypium maritimum

—"—Brasiliense6

Seeds

Ipomœa jocunda

Marvel of Peru or any Mirabilis

Pharbitis nil

Nankeen cotton (I had formerly seeds from Kew)7

Medicago maculata

Trifolium any species except,—

T subterraneum, strictum, resupinatum panonicum, rubens, repens, pratense, & incarnatum, for I have observed all these.8

Footnotes

1
CD had received seeds of a species of the leguminous genus Cassia from Fritz Müller (see Correspondence vol. 25, letter to Fritz Müller, 13 November 1877).
2
Sida corylifolia is a synonym of S. subcordata, a Malaysian species of Sida, the genus of fanpetals. Thiselton-Dyer’s reply has not been found, but in an undated note in DAR 209.14: 124 CD wrote, ‘Sida called by me corylifolia is rhombifolia’; CD’s notes on sleep in this species, under the name Sida corylifolia, dated from June 1878 to May 1879, are in DAR 209.14: 114–25. Sida rhombifolia is arrowleaf sida.
3
The Linnean name Sida retusa was synonymised by Joseph Dalton Hooker as S. rhombifolia var. retusa (Hooker 1872–97, 1: 323–4). Ernst Gottlieb Steudel did refer to Sida retusa in his Nomenclator botanicus; see Steudel 1841, p. 579. CD’s copy of Steudel 1841 is in the Darwin Library–CUL.
4
Pharbitis nil, a synonym of Ipomoea nil (white-edge morning-glory or Japanese morning-glory), is a pantropical species that originated in Central or South America but was naturalised in China and Japan by the tenth century (Austin et al. 2001).
5
Passiflora punctata was one of the species of passionflower that CD had observed for ‘Climbing plants’ (see ibid., pp. 90–1). He had also observed Clematis viticella (Italian leather flower; see ibid., pp. 30–2) and Lonicera brachypoda (a synonym of L. japonica, Japanese honeysuckle; see ibid., pp. 9, 19, 23).
6
Phyllanthus niruri is gale of the wind; Anoda wrightii is a synonym of A. lanceolata (lanceleaf anoda); Gossypium maritimum and G. brasiliense are both synonyms of G. barbadense (creole cotton).
7
Ipomoea jucunda is a species of morning-glory native to Sri Lanka. Marvel of Peru is a common name for Mirabilis jalapa; Mirabilis is the genus of four-o’clocks. Nankeen cotton was the common name given to Gossypium nanking (a synonym of G. arboreum, tree cotton), a naturally yellow-to-brownish-coloured cotton. No record of CD’s obtaining seeds of this cotton has been found, but records of experiments with seedlings (with alternative spelling ‘Nankin’), dated between 1878 and 1879, are in DAR 209.4: 276–92, DAR 209.9: 15, and DAR 209.14: 5.
8
Medicago maculata is a synonym of M. arabica (spotted medick). Trifolium subterraneum is subterranean clover; T. strictum is upright clover; T. pannonicum (‘panonicum’ is a misspelling) is Hungarian clover; T. rubens is red trefoil; T. repens is white clover; T. pratense is red clover; T. incarnatum is crimson clover.

Bibliography

Austin, Daniel F., et al. 2001. A putative tropical American plant, Ipomoea nil (Convolvulaceae), in pre-Columbian Japanese art. Economic Botany 55: 515–27.

‘Climbing plants’: On the movements and habits of climbing plants. By Charles Darwin. [Read 2 February 1865.] Journal of the Linnean Society (Botany) 9 (1867): 1–118.

Hooker, Joseph Dalton. 1872–97. The flora of British India. Assisted by various botanists. 7 vols. London: L. Reeve & Co.

Steudel, Ernst Gottlieb. 1841. Nomenclator botanicus: seu: synonymia plantarum universalis, enumerans ordine alphabetico nomina atque synonyma, tum generica tum specifica, et a Linnaeo et a recentioribus de re botanica scriptoribus plantis phanerogamis imposita. 2d edition. 2 parts. Stuttgart and Tübingen: J. G. Cotta.

Summary

Wants a Cassia identified

and several plants and seeds for experimental purposes.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11950
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
William Turner Thiselton-Dyer
Sent from
Down
Source of text
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Darwin: Letters to Thiselton-Dyer, 1873–81: ff. 166–8)
Physical description
LS(A) 5pp †

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11950,” accessed on 18 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11950.xml

letter

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