4 g Plant-life of the Oxford District 



to birds which largely propagate them by berries (Hawthorn, Sloe, Elder, 

 Viburnum, Rosa, Rubus, Privet, Honeysuckle, Bryonia, Solatium Dulcamara). 



The arable-land, with improved methods of agriculture, becomes 'cleaner' 

 and cleaner, with few weeds beyond those of cultivation, imported with foreign 

 seed and characteristically annuals and ephemerals, increasingly artificially 

 selected as their life-period coincides with that of the crop concerned ; each 

 crop carrying its own special weeds. The business of an agriculturalist, in 

 cultivating one or more special forms or races of plant for economic purposes, 

 is, in fact, to clear out every other associated plant as a ' weed ' which 

 otherwise robs the crop of water and expensive manures. 



The same standpoint receives emphasis in the case of the allotment 

 cultivation of vegetables, and the more select and aesthetic gardens growing 

 decorative plants and florists' flowers, in which intrusive ' weeds ' are kept 

 down more or less rigorously as vulgar interlopers ; while a few plant-forms, 

 often aesthetic monstrosities, are selected by human agency in a wholly 

 erratic manner at the expense of the rest of the vegetable and animal kingdom. 

 Allotment-holders are bound by regulation to keep down their weeds. 



The Willows which form so characteristic a feature of the margins of 

 low-lying alluvial meadows, with their remarkable exhibition of epiphytic 

 vegetation, owe the latter character, as also their special configuration, to the 

 manner in which they are periodically pollarded ; and the complex secondary 

 vegetation recorded in one year may be wholly swept away as the trees are 

 stripped to barest stumps, the usual period being anything from 2-10 years. 

 Abnormal effects also follow extreme lopping, as the plants are destroyed by 

 Fungus-attack, ultimately reducing to hollow shells, variously split, with 

 descending pillar-roots and hollow axis of touch-wood. Similar irregular 

 growths under human maltreatment are seen in the stools of oak-coppice, 

 and the deformities produced by continual cutting back and pollarding of 

 trees in hedgerows, with often fantastic results (Ash, Black Poplar, Elm). 

 Normal epiphytic vegetation is extremely rare, beyond the Mosses and 

 Lichens of the underwood. 1 



Hence in every grade the study of the original flora of the district 

 reveals its subordinate status, and one has to endeavour to trace it to the 

 causes which may have produced it beneath an entanglement of secondary 

 effects of human interference, the actual agents of which not only display 

 a supercilious manner in dealing with the deteriorated vestiges of the plant- 

 life of the neighbourhood, but often express wonder at, if not pity for, those 

 who consider the remains of such original vegetation worthy of more than 

 a casual notice. To the forester, attempting to grow trees for commercial 

 gain, the inferior vegetation is interesting only so far as it becomes a 

 nuisance, or harbours fungus and insect-forms which may be migrant 

 ' diseases ' of his trees. At best it is to be tolerated as protecting seedlings 

 from the wind, conserving soil-moisture, or as a ' soil-indicator '. The agri- 

 culturalist, again, cannot conceive why to many the wild flowers of his 

 hedges are more interesting than the crops of turnips and wheat in his fields ; 2 

 as the allotment -holder seldom thanks anybody for admiring the fine crops 

 of injurious or imported weeds coming up among his cabbages or on his 

 rubbish-heaps ; while the floriculturalist who can control a garden ' without 

 a single weed ' is regarded as deserving of the highest compliment that can 

 be paid him. 



The effect of an increasing population in the immediate vicinity of a large 



1 Polypodium vulgare alone has been found epiphytic on Beech-roots and on old Pear-trees. 



1 For much of this contemptuous regard, the field-botanist of the last century is largely 

 responsible. By hunting a farmer's fields for specimens of the British Flora, he put himself definitely 

 on the side of the farmer's enemy (the weeds) , instead of taking any interest in the production of new 

 strains of the agricultural crops. 



