To W. T. Thiselton-Dyer 3 October [1875]1
Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station | Orpington. S.E.R.
Oct. 3d
My dear Dyer
I wish that I had seen your very curious specimen two months ago.— I never saw nearly such large adhesive discs; but the fact is not new, & when you receive in November a copy of my little book on Climbing Plants, do look at my account of Bignonia Capreolata, as it is worth reading, though I say it who should not.—2
The Geum seeds are motionless, ill-luck to them.—3
Will you please to ask Hooker to sign enclosed & will you do so also & return paper to me.—4
I have a great wish next summer to experimentise on some Marantaceous plant to make out meaning of 2 sets of differently coloured stamens. I formerly tried Monochætum eurifolium, having with great difficulty raised seedlings, but these all died.5
The troublesome thing is that it is indispensable that I shd. have 2 seedling plants (i.e. not propagate from cuttings) of the same species. I once raised 2 sets of seedlings of Monochætum which appeared different from the pollen of the 2 sets of stamens; but illness cut short my observations—6 Will you enquire & think of any species which I could raise from seed this autumn, or which could be raised for me at Kew, as they are bad germinators—or again whether 2 seedling plants exist at Kew of any species which could be lent to me.—
Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin
I have just read (thanks to you) the Aroid paper in G. Chronicle with much interest.7
Footnotes
Bibliography
Climbing plants 2d ed.: The movements and habits of climbing plants. 2d edition. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.
Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.
Koch, Karl Heinrich Emil. 1875. Hybrid aroids. Gardeners’ Chronicle, 25 September 1875, pp. 398–9.
Summary
Suggests WTT-D read account of Bignonia capreolata in forthcoming Climbing plants.
Plans experiments [on Melastomataceae]. Describes similar experiment performed on Monochaetum. Interested in meaning of differently coloured stamens.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-10180
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- William Turner Thiselton-Dyer
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (Thiselton-Dyer, W.T., Letters from Charles Darwin 1873–81: 29–30)
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 10180,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-10180.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23