A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



The Botanist's Guide of Turner and Dillwyn (1805) gives a list of the 

 rarer plants of Nottinghamshire, mostly copied from Deering, but with a 

 few new species added. 



In 1807 Thomas Ordoyno of Newark published his Flora Notting- 

 hamiensis, which comprised the flowering plants and vascular cryptogams, 

 and included many species unknown to Deering. Although by no 

 means free from error, the publication of this work seems to have given 

 an impetus to the study of the county flora, for the first half of the 

 nineteenth century was a fruitful period in the history of Nottingham- 

 shire botany. Among the numerous workers of this time, two men, 

 Thomas Jowett and Godfrey Howitt, M.D., stand out conspicuously. 



Born in 1801 at Colwick (where his father was steward to the 

 Musters family), Thomas Jowett received a medical education and 

 practised in Nottingham for about ten years. In 1831 his health broke 

 down, and he retired to the village of Morton in the Trent Vale, where 

 he died in the following year at the early age of 31. From boyhood 

 Jowett seems to have been keenly interested in the plants of his native 

 county, and in 1826, when only 25 years old, he published in the 

 Nottingham Journal, under the pseudonym of ' II Rosajo,' a series of 

 ' Botanical Calendars,' or ' Notices of Native Plants of the County of Not- 

 tingham, arranged according to the order of their appearance.' These 

 calendars, twenty-eight in number, appeared at frequent intervals from 

 March to December, and are as remarkable for their admirable literary 

 style as for the evidence they afford of their author's intimate acquaintance 

 with the county flora and with the botanical and poetical literature of his 

 time. Localities are given for 1,023 species of flowering plants and 

 cryptogams, including more than 100 species not mentioned in the 

 works of Deering and Ordoyno. Four volumes of dried specimens of 

 Nottinghamshire plants collected and mounted by Jowett are preserved 

 in the Bromley House Library at Nottingham. These are particularly 

 valuable as settling the identity of several species which are not now to 

 be found in the county. 



Dr. Howitt, the friend and co-worker of Jowett, was born in 1800, 

 and after graduating in medicine at Edinburgh, practised as a physician 

 in Nottingham. In 1839 he emigrated to Australia, and died there in 

 1873. His Nottinghamshire Flora, the latest work devoted to the plants 

 of the county, appeared in 1839, and is a tiny volume of 124 pages, 

 recording 1,137 species of plants, of which 866 are phanerogams, ferns, 

 etc., and the rest are mosses, hepatics, lichens, and algae. There is not a 

 word of preface or introduction, no attempt is made to distinguish 

 between indigenous plants and those of doubtful nativity, and the informa- 

 tion about each species is confined within the narrowest possible limits. 

 It must, however, be remembered that the work was published during 

 the year in which Dr. Howitt left England, and was probably prepared 

 very hurriedly, with the object of placing his extensive knowledge of the 

 county flora at the disposal of other local botanists. As a record of the 

 composition of our flora at a period when it was still comparatively 



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