BOTANY 



I 



earliest records of Nottinghamshire plants are contained in 

 the Phytologia Britannica of William How, published in 1650. 

 In this work Nottinghamshire localities are given on the 

 authority of Mr. Stonehouse for Dianthus deltoids s, Gnaphalium 

 dioicum, and a grass which was probably Melica nutans. Sixteen years 

 later Christopher Merrett in his Pinax mentions, in addition to the above, 

 Sparganium minimum and a white-flowered form of Galeopsis versicolor. 

 These were probably found by Thomas Willisell, who travelled all over 

 Great Britain in search of plants, and visited Nottingham about this 

 time. He was the first botanist to observe Silene nutans on the walls of 

 Nottingham Castle. The celebrated John Ray was at Wollaton Hall in 

 1670, and records in his correspondence and botanical works a number 

 of Nottinghamshire plants, among which are Silene nutans, previously 

 discovered by Willisell, Cerastium arvense, Teesdalia nudicaulis, Verbascum 

 puherulentum, and Apera Spica-venti. One or two other unimportant 

 records are given in the Dillenian edition of Ray's Synopsis, published 

 in 1724, but no further additions of any consequence were published 

 until Deering's Catalogus Stirpium, etc., or Catalogue of Plants naturally 

 growing . . . about Nottingham, appeared in 1738. 



Charles Deering, M.D., was born in Saxony, probably in 1695, and 

 after graduating in physic at Leyden came to England and practised 

 for some years at Bedford, London, and Rochester. He settled in 

 Nottingham in 1736, and remained there until his death on 12 April, 

 1749. He was buried in St. Peter's churchyard. His Catalogue contains 

 about 840 separate entries of Phanerogamic and Cryptogamic plants, a 

 few of which are errors of identification, a few are cultivated plants only, 

 and some others are unimportant varieties of other species. Considering, 

 however, the paucity of works of reference, and the lack of facilities for 

 travelling at this remote period, as well as the fact that the book was 

 apparently the result of only two years' research, it displays truly remark- 

 able industry and ability on the part of the author. 



Most of the references to Nottinghamshire plants in the various 

 botanical works published in the latter half of the eighteenth century are 

 copied from Deering, but some additional Nottinghamshire records are 

 given in a paper by R. Pulteney on the rarer plants growing about 

 Loughborough, published in vol. xlix of the Philosophical Transactions, 

 and in Nichols' History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (1795). 

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