So4 
THE BOTANICAL FEATURES OF LITTONDALE.* 
Rev. W. A. SHUFFREY, M.A. 
Ir we would realise how different the flora in this valley is from 
that of the east side, for instance, of Yorkshire, we must bear 
in mind that we are here at an elevation of 750 feet above the 
sea, that the highest land in the Dale rises to 2270 feet, and 
that the flora exists in an average rainfall of sixty inches, or 
about three times that of the east side of England. This 
means that rain falls on two days out of three, taking the year 
through. We may wonder that there are any flowering plants 
at all. One would imagine that instead of phanerogams the 
whole country would be filled with mosses and lichens. But if 
we have a heavy rainfall we have a compensation in a very light 
soil, and one particularly favourable to plant life, viz., the 
limestone, and there is very little clay in the valley. It is the 
limestone that makes our flora so rich and extensive. As soon 
as the grit is reached, to the south—south east of Burnsall 
and Rylstone—many of our characteristic plants disappear, and 
the few that are peculiar to the grit and are not found on the 
limestone are unimportant and not rare. The first flower 
which blooms when Spring comes in after snows disappear, is 
not the ‘‘celandine” (Ranunculus ficaria) which Wordsworth 
noticed and sang of, in the Lake Country. It is the Tussilago 
Farfara. I have made a note for the last twenty years or more 
of the date of its first appearance in each year, and I find that 
the dates range from February 21st, 1884, to April 7th, 1904. 
Our rarest plants are, first the lady’s slipper orchid (Cyprz- 
pedium Calceolus). 1 don’t like to omit this, though I am sorry 
to say that the plants which I had in my garden for many 
years, and which were taken by my predecessor from the slope 
of the hill, have from some cause or other disappeared. But 
I understand that a single specimen was found in the Dale not 
many years ago, and I have a dried specimen of a flower of it 
which was found not far outside the parish, not long ago. And 
I think that it may yet be found in the Dale. Then there is the 
Polemoneum ceruleum, which grows plentifully not more than 
half a mile from the village ; and Sedum Telephium grows not 
far from it. We can also boast of Saxifraga opposttifolia and 
S. atzoides on the slopes of Penyghent. Of course the Dryas 
* Read at Arncliffe, to the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union, on August grd, 1907. 
Naturalist, 
