Abstract
WE have here an important addition to the already large class of English local floras. To the general botanist, as to people who have made no study of botany, it would seem that the plants of so comparatively small a region as the British Islands must have been catalogued long since, and that there is little to be done in that direction which is worth doing. It certainly is remarkable that, besides facts connected with geographical distribution, which a more minute knowledge of the plants of a country must bring to light, there are actually new plants to be found-new, that is to say, not only to Britain, but to science. A Pondweed (Potamogeton Griffithii), new to science, has recently been described and figured by Mr. Arthur Bennett in the Journal of Botany, from specimens brought from a mountain lake in North Wales—the only place in the world where it is known to occur. Not that this is the only species peculiar to these islands. To take one example, there is a species of Centaury (Erythrœa latifolia),1 which has never been found anywhere in the world but on the Lancastrian sandhills; and there it is not known to have been seen more recently than 1865, if then. In Mr. Townsend's county, a Spearwort (Ranunculus ophioglossifolius), not hitherto found nearer these shores than Jersey, has been detected so lately as to appear only on the very last page of the book; Spartina Townsendi is another case in point; and another example of a plant having been long overlooked, and of which the distribution has quite recently been much extended, will be found in Arum italicum, which was detected in the Isle of Wight in 1854, and was afterwards found in West Cornwall and Sussex; this was recorded for Dorset last year, and its range has been extended during the present year to Kent (Folkestone). The volume now before us supplies a good illustration of the way in which novelties may turn up in the best known districts. Probably if there is one part of England which has been more thoroughly botanised than another it is the Isle of Wight; yet it was here, and in one of the best known parts—the Downs at Freshwater—that Mr. Townsend first distinguished in 1879 an Erythræa (E. capitata, var. sphœrocephala), which is, as he says, “a peculiarly interesting addition to the British flora. It is,” he continues, “a well-marked species, and is not known now to occur anywhere else in the world but in the Isle of Wight and in Sussex. The other form of it was found some fifty years ago somewhere in the neighbourhood of Berlin (the exact locality not being known), and though sought for diligently, it has never been found again.”
Flora of Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight, or a List of the Flowering Plants and Ferns found in the County of Southampton, with Localities of the Less Common Species.
By Frederick Townsend, &c. Illustrated with Two Plates and a Map. (London: L. Reeve and Co., 1883.)
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BRITTEN, J. Flora of Hampshire, including the Isle of Wight, or a List of the Flowering Plants and Ferns found in the County of Southampton, with Localities of the Less Common Species . Nature 28, 122–123 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028122a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028122a0
