353 



(Dricitnjil '^rtrdfs. 



ON THE BOTANY OF THE LIZARD PENINSULA. 



By J. G. Bakek, F.L.S. 



Cornwall is one of those counties of Britain the distribution of plants 

 within which is most imperfectly registered. As an extreme term for the 

 island both in climate and <reograpliical position it possesses a special 

 interest, and ils geological character is in addition so pecidiar, that it 

 would be very interesting to have its flora worked out in full detail. It 

 is likely that thei'e is not much left to be done in discovering rarities 

 within its area, but a botanist, like myself — coming there from the 

 eastern or central parts of the island, and knowing its flora so far as pub- 

 lished records reach, the species that grow within the county as a whole, 

 with a notion of comparative abundance and dispersion of the special 

 rarities — finds much to interest him in seeing how abundant some of the 

 specially western species are, and how many plants which he takes for 

 granted are likely to be common, are found to be rare, or even altogether 

 al)seut, from wide tracts. It is as a contribution towards a Cornish flora 

 of this kind that these notes are put on record. The Lizard peninsula 

 is not only the most southern, but botanieally the most characteristic 

 and interesting part of the county. The following list was made 

 dnring a visit paid in August of the present year by Mr. A. W. 

 Bennett and myself under the guidance of Mr. T. R. A. Briggs, whose 

 previous knowledge of the district, and intimate practical acquaintance 

 with west-country species in a living state, enabled us to make the cata- 

 logue much more complete than it wouhl otherwise have been. The 

 line of north limit within which we restricted ourselves was the 

 high road that passes from Falmouth to Helston through Penryn, 

 This encloses an area of something like a hundred square miles, and in- 

 cludes, in addition to the Serpentine region that fills up all the southern 

 part of the Lizard promontory, both a tract on the north of it, underlaid 

 by sedimentary Devonian strata, and a slice out of the tract of low undu- 

 lated granite hills that fills up portions of the central ridge of the county, 

 and the whole of the extreme west between Penzance, St. Ives, and the 

 Laud's End. The Serpentine extends from the west shore of the Lizard 

 promontory at Mullion, past the north side of Goonhilly Downs, to the 

 opposite shore at Manaccan, filling up an area of forty square miles. The 

 centre of this is a bare uncultivated heathery plateau, rising to not more 

 than tin-ee or four hundred feet above sea-level, almost entirely destitute 

 even of planted trees, but a bare unbroken waste, extending in one ])art 

 nearly fi'om shore to shore, with abundance of Furze, both vernal ami 

 autumnal, intermixed with four kinds of Heath, the three that grow every- 

 wh(!re, and v(i(jrins more abundant than any of them, no ciliaris here at 

 all, allliongh it is plentiful a little beyond our bounds about Truro, broad 

 open grass-bordered roads edged with Aijroslia vulgaris, Fcdnca ovina, 

 Alra caryophi/llen, and Triodia, with PUtntago marUinia and Coronopus, 

 Saffhia nodosa and Anllmnis nohUls mixed abundantly amongst them, and 

 peaty pools in which the streamlets that run down the shore take their 

 rise, yielding plenty of Sc/.rpi/s flailaiis, Jnncnn .i//jj/i//i\, Jftdosciadiiim 

 VOL. IX. [dkcemueu 1, 1871.] - A 



