Dear Henry
Pray tell me how you find vegetation going on at Lacock – & whether your interesting plants promise well this year – Mattia umbellata Muscari giganteum, Hyacinthus spicatus &c – & any fresh seedlings.
Do you mean to come back to town? I saw a very pretty plant (dry) at Mr Lamberts <1> a sort of shrubby blue Aphyllanthes with permanent Xeranthemum-like flowers from sand banks in N. Holland. <2> Brown <3> remembers it there. Its name I forget.
I have beautiful Rhodods. from Abby <4> & Edwardsia I never saw in such profusion I shall try to encrease them they improve every year.
Have you the Norway maple A. platanoides at Lacock? Mary Talbot <5> has sent me a specimen from Llanelay. <6>
We have better accounts today both of Stavordale <7> & the King <8> – Mr Feilding <9> I am sorry to say seemed very ill when I saw him Saturday but of course you have later accounts. Horatia <10> is very well.
Sir Grenville Temple’s cone from Mt Atlas appears to be a true Cedar of Lebanon – a very interesting new habitat for a scarce tree. It is curious two such remarkable species as that & Rhod. ponticum should grow at the two ends of the Mediterranean basin & not in the intervening countries. The same was said too of Ornithog. Arabicum & Vaccinium Arctostaphylos but the former has been found in Italy & the latter is now divided into two distinct species one at each end. Who in England has studied the Geography of Plants? I should like to contribute towards it.
Yr Aff
W F S
London June twelve 1837 W. F. Strangways
H. F. Talbot Esq
Lacock
Chippenham
Notes:
1. Aylmer Bourke Lambert (1761–1842), botanist.2. New Holland, that is, Australia.
3. Robert Brown (1773–1858), botanist, author of the Prodromus floræ Novæ Hollandiæ… (1810).
4. Abbotsbury, Dorset: home of William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways.
5. Mary Thereza Talbot (1795–1861), WHFT’s cousin.
6. Llanely, or Lanely, Glamorganshire: home of Lady Mary Cole and Mary Thereza Talbot.
7. Henry Thomas Leopold Fox Strangways, Lord Stavordale (1816–1837), elder son of Henry Stephen Fox Strangways, 3rd Earl of Ilchester (1787–1858).
8. William IV, who died 20 June 1837.
9. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father.
10. Henrietta Horatia Maria Gaisford, née Feilding (1810–1851), WHFT’s half-sister.