What species of Tulips do I enclose? I think I will send you roots of all ours except those you know already viz. O. Solis. Sylv. & Clusiana I wish you could botanise a few days at Abbotsbury <1> this year, you would find something new – I think what you told me once was Silene conica, must be S conoidea a larger plant & more operidional <2> –
Raddi <3> would be glad to have a flower & leaf of any of the Melastomas that flower in the English hothouses – Shall I send you an offset of his fine new Bromelia? I do not know in what state of forwardness your garden is & am in the dark about many things I could send you – When are you to be in Switzerland & do you not mean to pass the Alps. Pray execute your plan of a travelling garden in front of your carriage <4> –
How is Jane? <5> her letters are become as scarce as a byssus <6> in fructification She was to find a parcel directed to her from me in B. St. <7> –
Yr affte
W F S
[envelope:]
H. F. Talbot Esqr
31 Sackville Street
Notes:
1. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
2. Possibly meaning ‘lidded’, relating to the calyx (seed capsule).
3. Joseph (Giuseppe) Raddi (1770–1829), Italian botanist.
4. Not WHFT’s original idea. [See Doc. No: 01257].
5. Jane Harriot Nicholl, née Talbot (1796–1874).
6. An archaic term for a fungal filament.
7. 31 Burlington Street, London home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.