Aliens and Adventives 103 



and Planes of the streets, all Conifers, Austrian Pine, Scots Pine, Larch, 

 Spruce, Cypress and Thuya of woodland and parkland, Sycamore, Horse 

 Chestnut, Walnut, Sweet Chestnut, and probably Beech and Hornbeam. 



The alien herbaceous flora includes the great majority of all the plants of 

 occupied ground to the extent of 86 per cent, of the county area, and is respon- 

 sible for many pasture-grasses and weeds, as well as the associates of arable 

 land, to a general estimate of nearly half the ecological flora. A few of 

 these are of special local interest, as so familiar and long-established that 

 they commonly pass as indigenous. Thus, Fritillaria Meleagris is well- 

 established in the wholly artificial alluvial pastures, and not elsewhere ; 

 though badly treated and picked on sight : Acorus Calamus (Sweet Flag) of 

 the river holds its own on the edge of the bank by vegetative growth, but 

 never fruits. 



English gardens, 1 instead of being filled with simples and a few decora- 

 tive flowers, become the repositories of exotic forms from all parts of the 

 world, their mutants, hybrids, and teratological phenomena, more particularly 

 in the form of ' Florists' flowers ', 2 as the apotheosis of the alien, assisted and 

 selected by man, in a wholly artificial and arbitrary manner, not invariably 

 directed by the best taste, perception of form, or colour-sense, and usually 

 entirely ignoring the meaning, function, and evolution of the floral and 

 reproductive mechanism. Before these the indigenous flora shrinks as an 

 assemblage of weeds, on no account to be tolerated inside the garden-walls, 

 except in the form of turf. Where the last interest of such forms centres in 

 the manner in which they may be Mendelized, or inter-crossed to give still 

 more puzzling freaks, one may still turn with relief to the honest free- 

 fighters of the wild, knowing the great strength such plants have in reserve, 

 and the rapid and devastating manner in which they would return once the 

 hand of man were relaxed. The best gardens arc only measured in hundreds 

 of years, the wild flora in hundreds of thousands, the scope of Modern 

 Botany takes into account many hundreds of millions. 



1 Amherst (iSys), Gardening in England, pp. 59. 123. 



Parkinson (1629), Parndisus Terrestris: The Garden of Pleasant Flowers. 

 Hesler (1613), Hortus Eystettensis. 



2 Nicholson, Dictionary of Gardening, ' Florists' Flowers'. 



