A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



streams. Such conditions favour the growth of many submontane plants 

 which could not now exist in Leicestershire. 



Of the 78 extinct Leicestershire species, some have not been reported 

 since Pulteney's time, some that were known to Bloxam, Coleman, and 

 Churchill Babington have disappeared, and a few that were reported twenty 

 years ago seem to have shared the same fate. All these extinctions are placed in 

 the list of flowering plants (Phaenogamia) within square brackets, so that it is 

 unnecessary to name them all here, but the most important are : the marsh 

 St. John's wort (Hypericum elodes] this disappeared from Beacon Hill 

 before Pulteney left the county ; Trifolium glomeratum (Loughborough, Pul- 

 teney) ; Lathyrus palustris (Pulteney) ; two sundews (Drosera) ; Stum latifolmm 

 (Pulteney) ; Antennaria dioica (Crabbe, not certainly, but most probably, on the 

 Leicester side of the boundary) ; lesser fleabane (Inula Pulicaria) ; chamomile 

 (Antbemis nobilis}; marsh gentian (Gentiana Pneumonanthe) ; deadly nightshade 

 (Atropa Belladonna); butterwort (Pinguicula vu/garis); peppermint (Mentha 

 piperita] ; fiddle dock (Rumex pulcber] ; frog-bit (Hydrocbaris) (not seen since 

 Pulteney's time, excepting the one which Mr. Rollings planted about 1848) ; 

 Luzula (Juncoides] Forsteri (1791); Ryncbospora alba and Schoenus nigricam 

 (Pulteney) ; Carexjiliformis (Bloxam) ; black spleenwort (A. Adlantum-nigrum)\ 

 marsh fern 8 (Lastraea Thelypteris) ' about Croxton Park ' (Crabbe in Nichols's 

 Hist, of Leicestershire, vol. i, p. cxcix) ; the royal fern (Osmunda regalis] ; two of 

 the club-mosses (Lycopodium inundatum and L. Selago). There are seven other 

 plants which have not been seen for a number of years. These are marked 

 in the list as extinct? They are Sagina nodosa, not recorded since 1850; 

 Crepis paludosa, not seen since 1886 ; Hypocbaeris glabra , not seen since Cole- 

 man's record, perhaps an alien as in Lincolnshire ; the cowberry (Vaccinium 

 Vitis-Idaed), discovered by Miss Kidger at the southern foot of High Sharpley, 

 June, 1887, but not seen again, although thoroughly searched for up to 1906; 

 Senecio campestris, found at Saltby Spinneys by the botanical section of the 

 Leicester Lit. & Phil. Soc. in 1887, has not been seen since. 



The plants which must be regarded, or which are known to be erroneously 

 recorded are Ranunculus Baudotii, Fumaria densiflora, Cocblearia offictnalis, 

 Hypericum Androsaemum, Vicia gracilis, Apium graveo/ens, Galium silvestre 

 (umbellatutri) ; melancholy thistle (Cnicus heterophyllus] ; Crabbe must have 

 mistaken C. prafensis, which grows in that part of the county within eight miles 

 of ' bogs at Knipton ' and was probably plentiful enough in his (Crabbe's) time 

 in the latter place, although he did not report it, for the submontane plant C. 

 heterophyllus ; lesser calamint (Clinopodium Nepeta], Lamium intermedium, Orchis 

 ustulata, Habenaria bifolia (Pulteney, 1746), the Scottish asphodel (T^ofieldia 

 palustris), Scirpus carinatus, green spleenwort (Asplenium 'viride), and Rumex 

 sanguineus type. 



' There is no reason why this fern should not have been abundant in the wet valley formed by the 

 Devon. The locality is altogether changed through drainage. All the marsh plants disappeared many years 

 ago. 'Shipman's Bog' is now a pasture, meadow, and plantation. There seems to have been a considerable 

 extent of boggy land from the sources of the Devon to below Knipton, and, judging from its appearance 

 during the past thirty years, we think the marsh fern would probably be plentiful along with Pinguicula vulgarif 

 and Parnaiiia. These last still grow on similar soil in the neighbouring county of Lincoln, one of them 

 within six miles, the other was close by, but disappeared in 1880. It is still found elsewhere in that county, 

 as is also the marsh fern, but this seems to have gone from Nottinghamshire before 1885. E. J. Lowe in Our 

 Native Term, vol. i, pt. 218 (1874), says he procured it from Oxton Bogs. That was thirty-five years after 

 the original record (Valentine in Howitt's Flora). 



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