22 REMARKABLE PLANTS FOUND GROWING 



and every clod of earth within a circle of not less than twenty 

 miles in circumference, if it can do nothing better, must " maintain 

 its Cabbage" 



Even the " stubborn glebe" of Moseley Common has been par- 

 tially subdued by the ploughshare, and wavii»^ fields of grain pro- 

 claim the victory ; and the gouty pedestrian who starts from the 

 centre of the busy circle to take a country walk, and enjoy the 

 wildness of Nature, long before he regains the haven of " his own 

 elbow chair," will find that it is " no joke/' 



But, great as is the change around us, it is a change which not 

 even the most enthusiastic lover of Nature can for a moment behold 

 with regret ; it has probably promoted the happiness of thousands 

 of human beings ; and if the man who has caused one blade of 

 grass to grow where none grew before, may justly be said to have 

 conferred a substantial benefit on his species ; surely the numerous 

 agricultural improvements — to say nothing of the commercial — 

 which, during the last half century, have been made in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Birmingham, cannot be contemplated without feelings 

 of the highest pleasure. 



As, however, the obvious consequence of this alteration of the 

 natural face of the country has been to render useless for the pur- 

 pose of reference eight out of every ten of the localities assigned to 

 plants by Dr. Withering and the authors of the Botanist's Guide, 

 I trust no apology is necessary for attempting to point out to the 

 collecting botanist the 'Mocal habitations" of some of the rarer 

 native plants found growing wild in the vicinity of Birmingham 

 during the last summer ; and I shall notice each species in the 

 order of the natural arrangement, as simplified in the recently pub- 

 lished Catalogue of British Plants, by Professor Henslow, of Cam- 

 bridge j without, however, following in all cases the titles or termin- 

 ology of the orders as adopted in that work.* 



DIVISION I.—VASCULARES, or COTYLEDONEyE. 

 Class I. — Dicotyledones. 



Order, RANUNcuLACEiE. — Thalictnim fiaviim, Yellow Thalick; 

 bank of the Tame, below Hamstead Mill ; Perry Barr. Anemone 

 nemorosaj Wood Anemone ; a field at Upper Saltley, crossed by a 



* A Catalogue of British Plants^ arranged according to the Natural Systeniy 

 with the Synonyms of De Candolle, Smith, Lindley, and Hooker. By the Rev. 

 J. S. Henslow, M.A., Professor of Botany^ the University of Cambridge. 

 Second Edition, pp. 61. Cambridge, 1835. 



