6 Plant-life of the Oxford District 



laboratory training in the methods of modern science. The epoch of the 

 collector and systematist, as also of the amateur naturalist, whose elementary 

 knowledge of the structure and organization of the plants with which he was 

 dealing has been so conspicuously inadequate, has done its work. It remains 

 for the ecologist to carry on the tale, more particularly from the standpoint 

 of the life-problems of the plants themselves. 



Such a record of the obvious presents an initial difficulty in the effects 

 of rapid seasonal change throughout the year, to which plant-life responds 

 by presenting short vegetative and even shorter reproductive periods. 

 Large numbers of species come on, flower, fruit, and disappear within a few 

 months, and many are only available at their optimum floristic range for a 

 week or two in the year. Hence the efforts of many seasons may be 

 required to determine the biological relations of a single type, and such 

 investigations make slow progress. But it will be the more evident that 

 collective work is essential, and control by a departmental organization, 

 independent of the individual workers, who may also come and go as 

 the flowers of the field themselves, can alone be effective. 



Again, in dealing with the plant-life of such a district, the botanist 

 is obviously primarily concerned with the plant-forms indigenous to the soil, 

 as developed under a rigorous and long-continued process of natural 

 selection. But as human activity seeks to dominate the flora, and to 

 convert it to its own uses, certain plants are encouraged as being more 

 valuable for food or other economic purposes, others are introduced, and 

 these are further developed at the expense of the original vegetation which 

 thus appears relegated to an inferior position, to be classed as ' weeds '. 

 In a district where human agency has thus interfered with every province of 

 the original flora, the botanist has at first to work largely in terms of such 

 relegated weed-flora; whether as the residual forms of the forest under- 

 wood, the wild flowers of hedges and pastures, or the admitted weeds of 

 arable land, allotments, and garden-ground. 



But that is no reason why the field-botanist should therefore confine 

 his attention to the primary flora and its vestigial representatives with 

 admixture of aliens as weeds of cultivation his province is to deal with all 

 the phenomena of plant-life. Cultivated plants, their various sub-races, 

 their artificial selection, and their relation to the special biological environ- 

 ment of the district, are equally a subject for scientific analysis and experi- 

 ment. Hence no account of the indigenous flora can be complete without 

 the adequate recognition of these aliens of modern cultivation ; and the 

 latter become the more interesting as they may be of exotic or even 

 sub-tropical origin, modified by the skill of man, and still maintained in 

 a state of wholly artificial existence by the care of the forester, agriculturalist, 

 and horticulturalist. 



Similarly, the extension of the indigenous flora to the cultivated flora 

 is further enlarged by paying attention to the lower types of vegetation, 

 as survivors of older phyla now relegated to inferior stations, filling the 

 gaps between higher forms, as Pteridophyta, Bryophyta, Algae, Fungi, and 

 even Bacteria, many of which appear as ' pests ' of cultivation, in their 

 efforts to secure some sort of station and continuity of existence in the 

 strain of competition with the more advanced and successful forms of the 

 vegetable kingdom of to-day. 



The business of the botanist is naturally to attempt to arrive at a 

 clear understanding of whatever plant-life may be around him. In a 

 tropical forest, where this phase of living organization is still dominant, he 

 may study vegetation in its most aggressive form. In a northern climate 

 where plant-life is struggling against the conditions of the environment, the 



