GARTH 237 



Hi. Richard Garth, d. 1597. 



Richard Garth was an accomplished botanist whose contribu- 

 tions to science are better remembered in the works of Clusius and 

 other foreign botanists than in his own country. He was the son 

 of Edward Garth, one of the six Clerks in Chancery, and owned 

 a property at Morden in Surrey in 1564. Between 1581 and 1591 

 his relations with Brazil enabled him to bring several of the plants 

 of that country, including the ' Papyrifera arbor', the 'Juni-pap- 

 peeywa Brasiliorum ', the ' Phaseolus Brasiliorum ', and some exotic 

 fruits to the notice of Clusius, who described them in his Libri 

 Exoticorimi in 1605. In return Clusius gave him a Solomon's 

 Seal, a root of which he 'very lovingly imparted' to Gerard, who 

 not unnaturally described him as ' a worshippfuU Gentleman, and 

 one that greatly delighteth in strange plants ' {Ger. 757). So far 

 as the English flora is concerned his name should be associated 

 with the Great Tooth wort (Lathraea squamaria L.) which grew on 

 his land at Groutes, not far from Croydon.^ 



In 1592 Garth purchased the manor of Drayton from Robert, 

 Earl of Sussex. He died in 1597, having married, firstly, Elizabeth 

 Dixon ^ and secondly Jane da. of . . . Busher, co. Line, who sur- 

 vived him, living at Drayton Manor facing Haylinge Island, two 

 miles from Portsmouth. After his death, Lobel appears to have 

 visited her garden there, and to have found ' Alopecuros altera 

 maxima Anglica paludosa sive Gramen Alopecuroides maxima ' ^ 

 and a variety of Bindweed, ' Helxine cissampelos alt.',* growing wild 

 near the house. She seems to have refreshed him with Metheglin 

 of her own brewing, and to have given him her recipe for it, which 

 he printed [Advers. alt., 1605, p. 473). 



Lobel speaks of Garth as Senior Clerk in Chancery (' Diplomatica 

 Curia '), an ofifice to which he had probably succeeded by inheritance, 

 and as most learned in the natural history of Indian as well as of 

 our native English plants. Hugh Morgan, James Garret, the 

 communicator of the vegetable discoveries of his brother Peter 

 and of those who accompanied Sir ' Walterus Raulaeus ' to Guiana, 



^ Ger. emac. 1585. In the author's copy of this work there is on p. 762 an 

 old MS. note relating to the Greatest Wolfe-bane, now Doronicum Pardalian- 

 ches L. ' This growes wild in the Orchard of a house called Grouts in the 

 parish of Mordon in Surry lately belonging to Mr. Garth, Lord of that Mannour. 

 It floures in Aprill.' 



''■ The Heralds Visitatiofi of London mentions a Richard Garth of Moorden, 

 CO. Surrey, who m. Dorothy Style. 



^ Polypogon monspeliensis Desf. 



* Lobel and How, p. 127 ; Park. Theatrum, p. 173. 



