Lacock Abbey,
Chippenham.
June 20th 1867
My Dear Sir
I have sent you a flowering plant as I mentioned I would in my last letter. <1> I hope it will reach you safely –
Vellozia has a stigma which Martius <2> describes as capitato-trilobum, and so it is figured in all his plates. My plant has a simple stigma. The germen is remarkably triangular – I should not call the corolla marcescent <3> (withering), but persistent & indurating – not so, I think in Vellozia, but Martius is not explicit about it.
My plant comes nearest to the Xerophytum of Commerson, <4> a native of Madagascar, which has most of its characters and a simple stigma, but it cannot be united with Xerophytum because the seedvessel & seeds of the latter are unknown – Sir James Smith <5> in Rees’s Cyclopœdia thinks that Xerophytum comes near to Hypoxis –
If you agree with the generality of Botanists in separating
Ipomœa from Convolvulus
Crinum from amaryllis
Pelargonium from Geranium
&c &c you will I think, admit that there is a much greater difference [illegible deletion] between my plant & Vellozia<6>) –
For in what does the difference consist between Convolvulus and Ipomœa? In the stigma, which is capitate in the latter (see Persoon)<7> & the same author adds (p. 185) that Ipomœa bracteata ought to be made into a new genus because it has filamenta glabra, and a stigma simply ovate and not either bifid or capitate – Such generic distinctions abound in Botanical authors. They may or may not be judicious, but they are admitted.
You said in your letter that you had made mention of the plant in some publication <8>. On what occasion was that?
Yours truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. Not traced.
2. Dr Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius (1794–1868), German botanist, Flora brasiliensis . . . (Stuttgart; Tübingen: J. G. Cotta, 1829–33).
3. See Doc. No: 09177, to which this is the reply.
4. Philibert Commerson (1727–1773), doctor, botanist and traveller.
5. Sir James Edward Smith, MD (1759–1828), botanist
6. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine published his 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. Christian Hendrik Persoon (1755–1837). The work referred to is probably his Synopsis plantarum seu Enchiridium botanicum . . . (Paris: C. F. Cramer, 1805).
8. Perhaps a misreading of Doc. No: 09177.
9. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh.