Sir. W. Hooker
Lacock Abbey, Chippenham
March 12 /52
Dr Sir
I have a fine Specimen of your Olearia pannosa about 7 or 8 feet high in flower in my conservatory. Shall I send you a branch of it in a box? –
It differs from your description in not having “radii corollis latis purpureis”, <1> but angustis albis. <2> It is certainly a tree, and probably grows 20 feet high.
The description of Echites splendens in the Botl Magaz. <3> does not notice its remarkable fruit which has been produced in my garden – It consists of 2 capsules, or follicles, united at the top, so as to form a circular hoop – Almost enough for a generic distinction. Shall I Send you a Specimen.
I was glad to see one of the Sikkim Rhododendrons <4> in flower the other day R. ciliatum. I don’t know whether this is the first of them that has bloomed.
Yours very truly
H. F. Talbot
Notes:
1. rays with broad purple corollas
2. narrow white (ones)
3. William Jackson Hooker and Samuel Curtis, Curtis’s Botanical Magazine…, a new edition (London: S. Curtis, and Sherwood, Gilbert & Piper, 1833).
4. Viz. one of the species discovered in Sikkim 1848/9 by Hooker’s son Dr Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911) that he brought back to Britain and illustrated in The rhododendrons of Sikkim-Himalaya… (London: Reeve, Benham and Reeve, 1849).