13 Great Stuart Street <1>
Edinburgh
Decr 24th
My Dear Sir
Will you give us the pleasure of your Company at dinner on Thursday 3d of January <2> at seven oclock?
I send with this note a small plant for your Botanic Garden.
It is the one you investigated <3> last year and which I afterwards took to Kew, where it was examined by Professor Oliver, <4> Mr Bentham <5> and others. The plant is undescribed. – I propose for it the provisional name of Vellozia elegans by which it may be designated for the present in your collection – We propose to have it figured next time it blooms, in the Botanical Magazine. <6>
It is a native of South Africa – As no other species of Vellozia is found in Africa, & this one diverges in important characters from the Brazilian species described and figured by Martius, <7> it is at present an open question whether it is not a new genus. At any rate it is very pretty when in full flower, and quite different in aspect from anything in the Gardens. <8>
Yours truly
H. F. Talbot
Prof. Balfour
[in Balfour’s hand:] 1866
H. Fox Talbot
Notes:
1. 13 Great Stuart Street, Edinburgh, frequent home of the Talbots from 1863-1871.
2. 3 January 1867.
3. See description in Doc. No: 09099.
4. Daniel Oliver (1830–1916), Keeper, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. See Doc. No: 09136.
5. George Bentham (1800–1884), philosopher & botanist.
6. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine, which has been published continuously since 1767. They later published the plant as Vellozia elegans, Natal Vellozia, s. 3 v. 25, 1 November 1869, Tab. 5803. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker observed, 'our first knowlege of this plant was derived from a specimen brought from his garden by the Hon. H. Fox Talbot, F.R.S., to the Kew Herbarium, in 1866, which was raised from seed procured either from the Cape or Madagascar, which Professor Oliver prounded to be a Vellozia (identical with a Natal plant, Hypoxis barbacenioides, Harv. MSS.), and the name V. elegans was proposed for it. A specimen, presented by Mr. Fox Talbot to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens, was next exhibited to the Botanical Society of that city by my friend Professor Balfour, as Vellozia elegans (see Proc. Bot. Soc. Edinb., ix. p. 79, Jan. 1867). At a subsequent meeting (l.c. p. 1839, 13th June), Dr. Balfour again exhibited this plant as V. Talboti, or, if it should prove a new genus, Talbotia elegans. On a third occasion (l.c. p. 192, 11th July), he exhibited it as Talbotia elegans, without a generic character....'
7. Dr Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), German botanist, Flora brasiliensis . . . (Stuttgart; Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1829–33).
8. The Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh.