185 



ON WANDERING PLANTS, WITH RECENT EXAMPLES. 



BY DR. BULL. 



The native fltira of every thickly-populated country must ever be gradually 

 changing. Soma plants disappear before drainage and cultivation, whilst others which 

 have been introduced become naturalized, and spread through the land. Indeed it 

 is but the repetition of an old tale from a botanical aspect. Wherever man himself 

 has wandered from one country to another, he has ever carried with him the objects 

 he has found useful, or to which from old associations he had become attached, and is 

 ever seeking to surround himself with others that may minister to his comfort or add 

 to his pleasure. Thus trees and flowers and plants of vavious kinds have been brought 

 to this country from time to time, and many of them have thoroughly established 

 themselves here, until now, even in Herefordshire, our club can no longer take a 

 botanical ramble without meeting many plants which do not properly belong to the 

 British flora. If we overlook the long-established forest trees ; if we stop only to admire 

 the numerous ornamental trees which are so continuously introduced ; if we pass by 

 the many flowers wanderingfrom gardens ; or the shrubs, that becoming naturalized have 

 strayed over the country; we shall still find numerous examples to attract our atten- 

 tion amongst the ordinary insignificant plants of the cornfields and hedgerows — plants 

 which have been introduced accidentally, and which liking the climate and soil of 

 their new country, make themselves completely at home, and thrive and flourish — 

 ripen their seeds, and otherwise propagate themselves with perfect freedom and 

 independence. 



These introductions have taken place from the earliest times — from times quite 

 pre-historic, botanically speaking— but of late years the increased facility of communi- 

 cation and the great increase in trade with foreign countries has added greatly to their 

 number, and often brings us plants — wanderers from more southern climates — wliich 

 can only flourish for the summer season of their introduction. 



Forest trees were doubtless amongst the earliest to be introduced, and several of 

 those now most famUiar to us in our lawns, and woods, and hedgerows are simply 

 wanderers from cultivation. The Ulmus campestris. the so-called "English elm," is a 

 very doubtful aboriginal British tree, though it is now usually considered so, and Mr. 

 Babington goes so far as to say that the common Hawthorn is also an introduced tree. 

 The Yew, the Box, the Beech, the Lime trees (Tilia intermedia and parmflora), the 

 Hornbeam, the Sycamore, with several of the Willows and Poplars, and some other 

 trees, though admitted into the British flora under protest, that is to say, in italics, are 

 certainly introduced trees ; whilst the Spanish Chcsnut (a tree, by-the-way, certainly 

 brought into this country in those pre-historic times to which I have alluded), the 

 Walnut-tree, the Plane-tree (Platanus oHentalis and occidentalis), the Horse Chestnut, 

 and many coniferous and other trees, are not even mentioned in the British lists. 



Wanderers from the Garden, however, form the most numerous band of naturalised 

 plants. In Herefordshire the Columbi7ie, the Globe Flower, the Soapwort, the Lungwort, 

 and some others, now recognised as British, belong to this category — as certainly do the 



