542 
Telopea Vol. 6(4): 1996 
Devon to New South Wales 
At the end of September 1846, Robert Brown (1773-1858), then the doyen of 
Australian botany, made a roundabout journey from London to visit his geologist 
friend, Sir Richard Vyvyan, the Tory MP, who lived in Cornwall (Mabberley 1985: 
356). On the way he stayed at the Half Moon Hotel, Exeter, whence he visited the 
great Devon nurseries of Veitch and of Lucombe, Pince & Co.'. He walked out to 
the latter, famed for the raising of the hybrid Lucombe Oak, situated in St Thomas's, 
Exeter and there met Robert Taylor Pince (1804-71), 'an accomplished botanist', 
who had married Lucombe's niece, and 'added materially to the variety of the 
Exeter Nursery's collections by judicious hybridising of well known species' L Pince, 
who was from an old Exeter family of gardeners, had joined the firm before 1828 
(Harvey 1988). By the time of Brown's visit, James Mangles could write that the 
firm was one of the principal nurseries in England. It was one of those firms which 
pioneered the despatch of collectors and the introduction of exotics in the 1830s 
and, by the next decade, had established introductions from Mexico, Brazil, Sierra 
Leone and Australia. In 1835, at the sale of Colvill's nursery at Chelsea, Pince had 
bought up the stock of gladiolus hybrids ('G. x insignis', Barnard (1972)) aird a 
little later sent illustrations of the hybrid 'Gladiolus ramosus’ as well as G. x insignis 
to Paxton's Magazine of Botany (published in vol 6(1839)99 & 7(1840)223). Pince 
showed Brown around his collection, which Brown praised, especially its conifers. 
It would appear that Pince's work is the background for Australia's pioneering hybridist, 
John Came Bidwill, for Bid will was born at St Thomas's in February 1815, the eldest 
son of Joseph Green Bidwill, a businessman ('share-broker, superintendent-registrar 
and joint clerk of St Thomas's Union' ^), and his wife Charlotte VVilmot Bidwill, second 
daughter of John Came, an author of Falmouth, Devon' (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927, 
ch. 14). On 4 April 1832, Bidwill had sailed from Plymouth to Canada on the Exmouth 
but returned in November 1834. He seems to have been back at St Thomas's when the 
gladiolus work was being carried out by Pince. Early in 1838, he obtained a letter of 
introduction from Lord Glenelg (1778-1866), Secretary of State for the Colonies, to 
Major Thomas Mitchell (1792-1855), Surveyor-General and explorer, then in London®. 
Mitchell in turn wrote a letter of introduction to the Colonial Secretary in New South 
Wales, Edward Deas Thomson (1800-1879), pointing out that Bidwill was 'respectably 
connected in Devonshire'. Armed with this, Bidwill, travelUng with his sister Elizabeth 
(born 1817, later Mrs Thomas Digby Miller), set off for New South Wales on the 
Araclme, a barque of 320 tons® on Good Friday 13 April 1838 'in the interests of his 
father's mercantile business' (Bidwill & Woodhouse l.c.). 
He arrived later that year, intending to settle on the land near Sydney, applying for 
about 2000 acres at 5/- an acre on 13 December (Bidwill & Woodhouse 1927: 114). 
In a few days came the Governor's approval for his purchase but there was a delay 
in the surveying and he took the opportunity, whilst waiting, to make some 'rambles' 
in New Zealand. It would seem that during his time in Sydney he was collecting 
seeds, which were received in England in 1839 and raised by Joseph Knight at his 
Chelsea nursery; Podolobium ilicifolium (Leguminosae) at least was illustrated by Jane 
Loudon in her Ladies' Magazine of Gardening (1: t. 8, 4, 1841; Mabberley 1978). 
First New Zealand travels 
The Bidwill firm was involved in the trade between New South Wales and New 
Zealand, there being a small European settlement at the Bay of Islands, whither 
