From W. E. Darwin 12 May [1864]
Southampton
May 12.
My Dear Father,
At last I have finished the Pulmonaria.1 I went over the day before yesterday, & collected a good number,2 I am going to tell all that I looked to though it probably will not be much use.
I gathered 150 stems from different plants and separated them into bundles of Long & short to judge of sizes, I found 95 were long, 45 short. When I compared the bundles, I had very little doubt that the long styled were the largest on the whole, both varied a good deal in size, but among the long styled there were none so small as among the shortstyled. And also there were none so large among the short styled as there were among the long. And I think the average or medium size of the long was greater than that of the short.3
(On looking at the bundles I thought the short styled seemed more withered or passed, so I gathered 29 fresh flowers of which 22 were short s & only 7 long; I found 7 of the short had 66 flowers & buds & 86 with corollas gone. The 7 long styled had 51 flowers & buds, 64 with corollas gone, but when I took the average for 7 flowers from the whole 21 of the short styled I found 64 flowers & buds, 65 flowers gone)
I have bracketed this as not worth reading so that on the whole it does not shew anything but I think the short styled bear more flowers than the long.
for 7 Short styled stems had 152 flowers in all
7 Long styled " —115 Do—
and the average for 7 shortstyled calculated from the 21 was 129 flowers in all.
This morning I took 10 stems of each kind
the 10 shortstyled had 190 flowers in all
10 Longstyled — 169 —Do—
I think this looks as if the short styled bore the most flowers,4 & make it more certain that the long styled are the largest.
I have drawn anthers as you see of 6 of each kind I have made duplicate drawings of some, as I was not quite sure of my drawing,5 the Long styled seem to have the longest anthers, as if you take BV the smallest longstyled anther, it is larger than 2 or 3 of the shortstyled.6
It was only an accident about the pin headed pistil, I have looked at a great many plants and they are all more or less bilobed.7 I could not make up my mind which kind had most pollen.8
I keep my flowers in water in case you want anything else.
Your affect son | W. E D
[Enclosure]9

CD annotations
8.1 It was … bilobed 8.2] scored pencil Bottom of first page:
‘ 95 ’ 55 pencil — 150
Cover, recto: ‘May 13th 1864’ pencil; ‘4’ red crayon, circled red crayon 10 Cover, verso: ‘May 13 1864 | Pulmonaria | (number of Plants of both forms) | Short-styled more flowers | see Hildebrand11 | Length of anthers’ pencil Top of enclosure: ‘May 12th’ pencil Enclosure, verso: ‘Shape & size of Anthers’ pencil
Footnotes
Bibliography
Forms of flowers: The different forms of flowers on plants of the same species. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1877.
Summary
Observations on style length of 150 flowers of Pulmonaria [angustifolia]. [See Forms of flowers, p. 105.]
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4492
- From
- William Erasmus Darwin
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Southampton
- Source of text
- DAR 110: A66–7
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp †, diags 2pp †
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4492,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4492.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 12