I must beg sometime for a single sentence about the Galapagos plants. viz what percentage are (as far as is known) peculiar to the Archipelago? you have already told me that the plants have a S. American physionomy. And how far the collections bear out or contradict the notion of the different islands, having in some instances representative & different species.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
[16 April 1845], DCP 848
[I am] a man who hardly knows a daisy from a Dandelion.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker, [3 September 1846], DCP 996
Miss Thorley & I are doing a little Botanical work (!) for our amusement, & it does amuse me very much, viz making a collection of all the plants, which grow in a field, which has been allowed to run waste for 15 years … & we are also collecting all the plants in an adjoining & similar but cultivated field; just for the fun of seeing what plants have arrived or dyed out. Hereafter we shall want a bit of help in naming puzzlers.—How dreadfully difficult it is to name plants.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
5 June [1855], DCP 1693
I have just made out my first Grass, hurrah! hurrah! I must confess that Fortune favours the bold, for as good luck wd have it, it was the easy Anthoxanthum odoratum: nevertheless it is a great discovery; I never expected to make out a grass in all my life. So Hurrah. It has done my stomach surprising good.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
5 June [1855], DCP1693
I have been very lucky & have now examined almost every British Orchid fresh…. I cannot fancy anything more perfect than the many curious contrivances.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
19 June [1861], DCP 3190
The object of the following work is to show that the contrivances by which Orchids are fertilised, are as varied and almost as perfect as any of the most beautiful adaptations in the animal kingdom; and, secondly, to show that these contrivances have for their main object the fertilisation of each flower…. This treatise affords me also an opportunity of attempting to show that the study of organic beings may be as interesting to an observer who is fully convinced that the structure of each is due to secondary laws, as to one who views every trifling detail of structure as the result of the direct interposition of the Creator.
Orchids, 1
In my examination of Orchids, hardly any fact has so much struck me as the endless diversity of structure,—the prodigality of resources,—for gaining the very same end, namely, the fertilisation of one flower by the pollen of another. The fact to a certain extent is intelligible on the principle of natural selection. As all the parts of a flower are co-ordinated, if slight variations in any one part are preserved from being beneficial to the plant, then the other parts will generally have to be modified in some corresponding manner.
Orchids, 348–49
[James] Bateman has just sent me a lot of orchids with the Angræcum sesquipedale: do you know its marvellous nectary 11 ½ inches long, with nectar only at the extremity. What a proboscis the moth that sucks it, must have! It is a very pretty case.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
30 January [1862], DCP 3421
No one else has perceived that my chief interest in my orchid book has been that it was a “flank movement” on the enemy.
Darwin to Asa Gray,
23[–24] July [1862], DCP 3662
In the summer of 1860 I was idling and resting near Hartfield [Sussex], where two species of Drosera abound; and I noticed that numerous insects had been entrapped by the leaves. I carried home some plants, and on giving them insects saw the movements of the tentacles, and this made me think it probable that the insects were caught for some special purpose…. The fact that a plant should secrete, when properly excited, a fluid containing an acid and ferment, closely analogous to the digestive fluid of an animal, was certainly a remarkable discovery.
Autobiography, 132–33
At this present moment I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world.
Darwin to Charles Lyell,
14 November [1860], DCP 2565
By Jove I sometimes think Drosera is a disguised animal!
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
4 December [1860], DCP 3008
I write now, because the new Hothouse is ready & I long to stock it, just like a school-boy.—Could you tell me pretty soon what plants you can give me; & then I shall know what to order. And do advise me how I had better get such plants as you can spare. Would it do to send my tax-cart early in morning, on a day that was not frosty, lining the cart with mats; & arriving here before night.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
15 February [1863], DCP 3986
The only approach to work which I can do is to look at tendrils & climbers, this does not distress my weakened Brain.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
[27 January 1864], DCP 4398
I am glad to hear the Abutilon is a new species, & I am honoured by its name [Abutilon darwinii]. I do not know its habitat, but strongly suspect that it must be St. Catharina [Brazil]. The plant flourished & flowered profusely in my cool hot-house.—It seems to like heat. It offers an instance, of which I have known others, of being during the early part of the flowering season quite sterile with pollen from the same plant, though fertile with the pollen of any other plant, though later in the season it becomes capable of self-fertilisation.
Darwin to J. D. Hooker,
23 July [1871], DCP 7878
I do not think anything in my scientific life has given me so much satisfaction as making out the meaning of the structure of these plants [Primula]…. After some additional experiment, it became evident that the two forms, though both were perfect hermaphrodites, bore almost the same relation to one another as do the two sexes of an ordinary animal.
Autobiography, 126–27