To T. H. Farrer 20 October [1869]1
Down. | Beckenham | Kent. S.E.
Oct. 20
My dear Farrer
Your notes strike me as good & I agree with Hooker that they are quite worth publication; but I wish you could first have examined more species.—2 Especially Passiflora princeps, a splendid species, (as I believe called) in which, as I remember (for I cannot find my notes wh. I suppose I made) there were some (3?) regular rounded passages or holes through the corona to the nectary. The nectary, if my memory serves me, was constructed like that of Tacsonia.3
My Tac: van volxenis has produced, without any aid in fertilisation, plenty of fruit with an abundance of apparently good seed: the fert: is effected by each of the three stigmas slowly curving upwards (flowers being pendent) & in thus moving they generally touch one of the anthers of same flower.—4
See Hildebrand in pamphlet last sent, on abortion of stamens in uppermost or final dichogamous flower in Geranium:5 this seems an eminently interesting case of abortion— attend to other such cases— see how is the last flower in reference to its capacity for being fertilised.—
Yours very sincerely | C. Darwin—
You ought to set up in cool Hothouse & Greenhouse.— Could you not go to Kew & see if any Passifloras are now in flower?6
Footnotes
Bibliography
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Hildebrand, Friedrich Hermann Gustav. 1869. Weitere Beobachtungen über die Bestäubungsverhältnisse an Blüthen. Botanische Zeitung 27: 473–81, 489–95, 505–12.
Summary
Comments on notes made by THF on Passiflora and Tacsonia. Suggests he examine more species. Recalls his own observations on P. princeps and Tacsonia.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-6945
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Thomas Henry Farrer, 1st baronet and 1st Baron Farrer
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Linnean Society of London (LS Ms 299/10)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 6945,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-6945.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17