BOTANY 



SUSSEX owing to its varied geological formations, its downs 

 differing in elevation, its extensive weald, its forests, its cliffs, and 

 its long seaboard, indented to the westward by estuaries, is one of 

 the most interesting of our southern counties with respect to 

 its flora. 



It has been fortunate too in having attracted the attention of some of 

 the more eminent of English naturalists in early times. As preliminary, 

 therefore, a short history of the botany of the county is here sketched.^ 



In Gerarde's Herball or General Historie of Plants, 1633, we have 

 the earliest account with which I am acquainted of plants with their 

 localities in the county. Of the beech, the chief ornament of the Sussex 

 hangers, he says : ' It groweth very plentifully in many forests and desart 

 places of Sussex. The Sea Holly I found growing at Rye and Winchel- 

 sea, and the Rock Sampier.' He also gives a figure, without locality, of 

 the spiked rampion now met with in Sussex only, well describing it as 

 ' bearing at the top of the stalke a great thicke bushy eare, full of little 

 long floures closely thrust together like a Fox-taile.' This plant, which 

 occurs at Mayfield and its vicinity, is not known in any other district in 

 Great Britain. Another woodcut of Gerarde may be mentioned here. 

 It is an excellent one of the pease earth-nut, with its peculiar tubers, 

 which ' by the Dutch are called tailled mise, of the similitude or likenesse 

 of domestical! mise, which the blacke round and long nuts with a piece 

 of string hanging out behind do represent ' — and to a dead, shrivelled 

 mouse they have certainly a quaint resemblance. Recorded only in 

 Essex, Devon and Sussex, it was found at Eastbourne in 1888 by 

 Mr. R. D. Postans. 



In 1640 Parkinson mentions the bulbiferous coralwort not pre- 

 viously met with in England. It is still a very rare species in Sussex. 



In 1690 John Ray, the 'father of English Botany' published his 

 Syjwpsis MethoJica Stirpium Britannicarum. He visited this county several 

 times, and in a letter to Mr. Courthorpe, of Danny, April 28, 1692, 



^ I wish to express my thanks to the following friends and correspondents who have 

 informed me of the discovery of additional species and stations : Miss R. L. Arnold, Miss 

 Gould, Mrs. S. Butcher, Mrs. A. E. Lomax, Mr. B. Oakeshott, Messrs. J. Anderson, A. 

 Bennett, F.L.S., P. Coombes, W. H. B. Fletcher, J. & H. Groves, F.L.S., J. H. A. Jenner, 

 H. C. Miller, Dr. F. V. Paxton, F. Townsend, F.L.S., W. C. Unwin, the Revs. E. N. 

 Bloomfield, E. R. Ellman, A. A. Evans, A. Fuller and W. Moyle Rogers, F.L.S., who have 

 aided me both as to the phanerogams and cryptogams. 



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