Naples
18 Jan 1832
My dear Henry
I mean to begin a letter to be filled up as the season advances for there having been no frost whatever this winter the flowers are coming on with unexampled rapidity. I have been today with Tenore <1> comparing the two controverted species of Crocus – Imperati & suaveolens. They seem to be quite different – the former is native of Castellamare & the former latter of Valle d’Inferno. this is more delicate & smaller than the other, something like the Florence pusillus – has a long thin stalk simple spathe, pale stigma, pointed petals, & upright leaves. smooth yellow faux; <2> & strong smell of saffron, which the other wants more than most Crocuses – we cannot yet compare the bulbs. C. I. has been in flower ever since the beginning of Decr, the other only just come in. Did you not find something of this sort at Nice & call it meridionalis?
I begin to spy daylight between the leaves of the Colchicums. There is more character in their habits than people imagine. I make six species at least certain, that I know, allowing for a few varieties & perhaps species not thoroughly made out. They are 1. C. montanum of Genoa & Sicily, flores cum foliis erumpunt. <3> 2. variegatum, fol. undulatis <4> common in English gardens – 3. alpinum, parvulum, æstivum, <5> of the high Apennines – 4. Caulescens, maximum, folia paulo post flores, <6> erecta, doubtful if the same as C. Bivonæ of Sicily or persicum of others. 5. byzantinum, majusculum, tesselletum foliis planis linearibus, angustis, orchideis, subgriseis, expansis <7>– of Pæstum &c. 6. Autumnale, fol. confertis, <8> of every where else. Pray tell me how you like this plan. Tenore is planting a quantity of tender gramineæ, cyperaceæ &c out, & old greenhouse shrubs & trees, I begin to fancy the Cyperi. do you know the singular grass Panicum plicatum – & Ludolfia glaucescens?
I believe I mentioned to you the collection of 2000 Sicilian plants dried to be sold here – made by Gaspassini a collaboratore of Gussone. <9> Primula Columnæ is in flower it cannot be the same as P Suaveolens as it has less smell than a primrose. Pray tell me if English snowdrops have the peduncle longer or shorter than the spatha – what they send here from the Apennines have the spatha quite overtopping the flower – Tenore wants to know if ours are the same.
I hope Caroline <10> will carry away with her a portion of botanical taste for the benefit of Mt Edgcumbe, <11> it is such a tempting place for experiments – There is a friend of Mrs Seymers <12> here who heard from her at Lacock & had a full report of her admiration of it.
Are we on the eve of revolution in England or not, nobody here can solve the question & I think opinions have become more gloomy since Ld Hertfords <13> arrival – A German lady Md de Metting & a great botanist has discovered a new plant near Cumæ something between Ornithog. & Anthericum & it is to be called Bulbine Mettingiæ – I am rather jealous of this good luck – the name is bad as it has a fibrous root. I have not seen it.
Have you read [illegible] last work – it seems by the review to be very interesting. The moon’s atmosphere being discovered strikes me as a great step made. Your mother <14> never writes to me at all.
Yr Aff
W F S
H. F. Talbot Esq.
31 Sackville Street
Notes:
1. Michel Tenore (1780–1861), Italian botanist & traveller.
2. Throat (fauces).
3. The flowers come up with the leaves.
4. With wave-edged leaves.
5. Small, summer (flowering).
6. The biggest, the leaves a little after the flowers.
7. Rather bigger, tessellated, with flat, linear leaves (that are) narrow, orchid-like, greyish, outspread.
8. With dense leafage.
9. Giovanni Gussone (1787–1866), botanist.
10. Lady Caroline Augusta Edgcumbe, née Feilding (1808-1881); WHFT's half-sister; Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Victoria, 1840–1854 & 1863–1865.
11. Mt Edgecumbe, near Plymouth: seat of the Earl of Mt Edgcumbe.
12. Lady Harriet Ker Seymer, née Beckford (1779-1853), wife of Henry Ker Seymer (1782-1834), JP, MP & Sheriff of Dorset .
13. Probably Francis Charles Seymour-Conway, 3rd Marquess of Hertford (1777–1842).
14. Lady Elisabeth Theresa Feilding, née Fox Strangways, first m Talbot (1773–1846), WHFT’s mother.