Chapter XXVI: Part V: Botany

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

BY WM. MATHEWS, M.A.

In attempting to describe the more interesting features of the indigenous Flora of the neighbourhood of Birmingham, it is necessary to define the limits of the district intended to be included. A circle of 20 miles radius, with the Town Hall as its centre, has been found convenient as an approximate boundary. This will enclose portions of the three counties of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford, which meet at a point on the south-western edge of the Borough, and a small part of the County of Salop. The latter, with the exception shortly to be mentioned, will be excluded from consideration. On the other hand, the radius must be extended about two miles on the south-east to take in the town of Stratford-on-Avon, and about the same distance on the west to take in the woodlands west of the Severn from Shrawley Wood to Wyre Forest near Bewdley. A part of the Forest is in Salop, and to this extent only is the latter county admitted. The district thus defined contains an area of about 12,500 square miles. It includes the towns of Birmingham, Sutton Coldfield, Tamworth, Nuneaton, Coventry, Leamington, Warwick, Stratford, and Alcester, in the County of Warwick; of Bromsgrove, Droitwich, Stourport, Bewdley, Kidderminster, Stourbridge, Halesowen, and Dudley, in Worcester; of Wolverhampton, Walsall, Penkridge, Cannock, Rugeley, and Lichfield, in Stafford.

The vegetation of any district depends partly on the nature of the soil, as determined by its geological structure, partly on altitude and drainage areas, and partly on the character of the surface, whether water, bog, heath, arable, pasture or woodland. The geology has been treated of in a previous part of this volume. It will be sufficient to say here that the red rocks of the Trias occupy by far the largest portion of the area, and that calcareous soils are rare. An elevated line of country, commencing north of Wolverhampton, runs in a southerly direction, by Sedgley, Dudley, and the Rowley Hills, to Frankley Beeches and the Upper Lickey, where it attains an altitude of about 900 feet above the sea. This is the great water parting of central England which divides the drainage areas of the Trent and Severn. From the Lickey, a line of lower elevation runs in a westerly direction and divides the tributaries of the Trent from those of the Avon. The subordinate river basins and surface characteristics will be noticed in the special articles.

A brief outline of the history of the Botany of the Midland Counties may be useful to students, and is therefore included in these remarks. It commences with the honoured name of William Withering, one of the most eminent of British Botanists. Born at Wellington, in Shropshire, in 1741, he practised as a physician in Birmingham, where he died in 1799. The first edition of his well-known “Botanical arrangement of British Plants,” in two volumes, was published in 1776; the second, in three vols. in 1787; the third, in four vols. in 1796. It passed through five further editions, in four volumes, after his death. Numerous references to localities in the neighbourhood of Birmingham are contained in these volumes.

Scarcely less distinguished was Thomas Purton (1768-1833), surgeon, of Alcester, the author of “The Midland Flora.” The first two volumes of the work appeared in 1817, the third in 1821. They contain copious descriptions of local habitats in the counties of Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford.

Nash’s “History of Worcestershire,” 1781, contains (Introduction p. lxxxix.) a list of forty-three rare plants, two only of which, _Vaccinium Oxycoccos_ and _Comarum palustre_, recorded as growing at the Lickey, belong to the Birmingham district. The Supplement (1799) has a further list of forty-seven plants, four of which belong to the district.

The late W. G. Perry, bookseller, of Warwick, published at Warwick, in 1820, the first Flora of that county, under the title of “Plantæ Varvicenses Selectæ.” He also contributed to the Magazine of Natural History, Vol. iv., p. 450, 1831, a list of some of the rarer plants of Worcestershire, chiefly from the neighbourhood of Kidderminster and Bewdley.

The “History of Stourbridge,” by William Scott, Stourbridge, 1832, contains a list of plants from the neighbourhood of that town, in the counties of Worcester and Stafford.

For a knowledge of the plants of the immediate vicinity of Birmingham, and particularly of the once celebrated “Moseley Wake Green,” Botanists are chiefly indebted to the late William Ick, Secretary of the old Philosophical Society of Birmingham. Mr. Ick published two lists; the first in “The Analyst,” for 1837, Vol. vi., p. 20; the second in the “Midland Counties Herald,” Aug. 1838.

The present Mrs. Avery, then Miss M. A. Beilby, was a frequent visitor to Moseley at about that date, and has obliged the writer with a list of the rarities gathered by her at Moseley Bog and Common in 1835 and 1836.

A list of some of the rarer plants of the neighbourhood of Birmingham, by Saml. Freeman, appeared in the first series of the Phytologist, Vol. i., p. 261.

The Rev. W. T. Bree, Rector of Allesley, near Coventry, was a well-known Botanist. He contributed to Purton’s Midland Flora, to the Magazine of Natural History, and to the first series of the Phytologist, many notices of the plants of the northern part of his county.

The first volume of the last named serial, 1844, pp. 508-514, contains an account of the ferns of Stafford, Warwick, and Worcester, from the pen of the Editor, the late Edward Newman.

The second series of the Phytologist, 1855 to 1863, was edited by the late Alexander Irvine of Chelsea. Several plants from the neighbourhood of Clent and Churchill are recorded by the Editor, in an article on the “Botany of the Clent Hills,” Vol. ii., p. 385, April, 1858.

The Studies of Warwickshire Fungi, made by the late Mrs. F. Russell, of Kenilworth, will be noticed in the article on that group of plants.

The County Botany of Worcester has been associated for upwards of half a century, with the name of the veteran Worcester Botanist, Mr. Edwin Lees. His first observations, made in conjunction with the late Dr. Streeten, were published in Hastings’s “Illustrations of the Natural History of Worcestershire,” (1834). These, together with a further list supplied by him to the late H. C. Watson, are incorporated in the Catalogue of Worcestershire plants in “The New Botanists’ Guide,” (1835). The same work contains lists of the plants of Warwick and Stafford. In 1867, Mr. Lees published his “Botany of Worcester,” the only complete record of the flowering plants and ferns of the whole county, which has yet appeared. His “Botany of the Malvern Hills,” which has passed through three editions, relates to a part of the county outside the limits of the Birmingham district.

The plants of the north-east of the county are enumerated in the “Flora of the Clent and Lickey Hills,” by the present writer. First edition, 1868; Second Edition, 1881. He has been indebted for assistance to many friends, too numerous to mention in this notice.

“The Natural History of Stafford,” by R. Garner, 1884, contains a list of the rarer plants of that county. Our more recent knowledge of its botany is due to Dr. Fraser, of Wolverhampton, whose discoveries are published in the Reports of the Botanical Record Club, 1873-1883. These reports contain also many district records communicated by the Editor, Dr. F. Arnold Lees, and by Mr. J. E. Bagnall.

The modern geographical botany of Warwick is the work of members of the Birmingham Natural History and Microscopal Society, and especially of Mr. J. E. Bagnall, Mr. A. W. Wills, and Mr. W. B. Grove. The volumes of “The Midland Naturalist” have been enriched by numerous papers from these Botanists, for one of which, the monograph on the Pilobolidæ, published in Vol. vii., 1884, the Darwin Gold Medal of the Midland Union of Natural History Societies was awarded to Mr. Grove. Those relating to the Botany of the county are, by Mr. Bagnall, “The Distribution of the Roses,” (Vol. i, 1878), “The Moss Flora,” (Vols. ii. and iii., 1879-80), “The Hepaticæ,” (Vol. iii., 1880), and “The Flora of Warwickshire,” (Vols. iv.-ix., 1880-86); by Mr. Wills, “The Desmidiæ of Sutton Park,” (Vol. iii., 1880); by Mr. Grove, “The Fungi of the neighbourhood of Birmingham,” (Vols. v.-vii., 1882-84.)

The works of the late Hewett Cottrell Watson, the founder of the Science of the Geographical Botany of Great Britain, must not be passed over. Those containing provincial or comital records, besides the new Botanists’ Guide already mentioned, are the Cybele Britannica, 1847-1872; Topographical Botany, 1st edit., 1873-4, 2nd edit., 1883.

It may be interesting to mention that a Students’ Garden for economic and medicinal plants was laid out in 1882, in the Edgbaston Botanical Gardens, from the plans of Professor Hillhouse, of Mason College, and that a Students’ garden of British plants has been laid out, in the present year, in Cannon Hill Park, from the plans of Mr. J. W. Oliver, teacher of Botany at the Midland Institute. For the establishment of the latter garden, students are indebted to Mr. Alderman White, chairman of the Baths and Parks Committee of the Town Council.

County boundaries have been so generally adopted as the limits of local Floras, that it has been thought desirable to adhere to them, and to tabulate the plants separately for Warwick, Worcester, and Stafford, whenever the materials at command have admitted of this division. The flowering plants and ferns present no difficulty, but with respect to the lower forms of vegetation it has not always been found possible to determine their comital distribution. The plants indigenous to the district are described in the following articles:--

The Flowering Plants and Ferns by Mr. J. E. Bagnall, assisted, as to Worcester, by the editor of the section, and, as to Stafford, by Dr. Fraser. The Mosses, Hepatics, and Lichens, by Mr. J. E. Bagnall. The Algæ, by Mr. A. W. Wills. The Fungi, by Mr. W. B. Grove.