[Enclosure]

A curious divarication of the common garden Myosotis (which I suppose to be M. sylvatica) has just appeared under my nose in the following manner. I had, in a border, a large tuft, which I brought last year from the North of Ireland—& just when it was beginning to open out the inflorescence before flowering—I took a trowel & divided the tuft through the middle, taking up one half of it, which I transferred to a pot, & after a few days to the drawing room window—& covering up the other half, again—in the border.

In a few days both came into blossom—the Border plant after its ordinary manner—But, on looking at the potted plant one morning I was surprised to see, as I supposed, that several of the stems were already out of flower (as it looked)—before I had noticed their having been in flower. But, on applying a pocket lense the truth came out—quite differently! to wit—These stems were in full bloom, like the rest—but both calyx & corolla very unlike the normal ones.

The Calyx in the ordinary =

The Ditto in the Extraordy = of larger & broader sepals united much higher up, expanded at tips—& the tube broadly obconic.

But the corolla is most changed—it has a tube shorter than the calyx, perfectly open in the throat, without the 5, toothlike or glandlike prominences of Myosotis, also without hairs under the orifice—& lastly of a pea-green colour—identical with that of the calyx. The genitalia seem perfect & already the carpels are swelling into nuts, which look as if they would be of different form from those of Myosotis. I shall try for seed—by & by, & I hope it may be still in flower when you come.

I recently found (& sent to Darwin) a monstrous Dandelion in which all the fl. heads of the stock, amounting to 8 or 10 were similarly transformed, thus.—¹⁴ The flowers were a fulvous-orange, like those of the orange Hieracium—& all the achenes were (see next page) shaped & quite smooth—instead of as they out to be.

I did not examine (being hurried) but if the ovary had an ovule—here was a jump from one Composite genus to another. No writer on Cichoraceæ would, I suppose, put such dissimilar achenes in the same genus.¹⁵

Do you not hold that divaricated species never return again to their normal conditions?¹⁶— Bain¹⁷ has in his garden the old mother plant of the variety “Frizellæ” of Aspl. filix fœmina (you know it = with fronds like Aspl. trichomanes.)

But it has seen the error of its way, & after having propagated thousands of little heretical aberrants, it now comes out in its old dress, as genuine filix fœmina!¹⁸

Yours W H Hy