28 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
polypody fern, etc.; and around the pits, Teesdale’s cress, woodsage, 
foxglove, etc., typical of birch and sandy oak wood, this being a composite 
wood on different soil types. 
Buddon Wood is similarly composite, with dry or sandy oakwood types, 
much holly and rowan, whortleberry, etc., around the granite, and oak 
hazel elsewhere on Red Marl, including the only station now for club 
moss. On the edge of the wood is also the only locality for subterranean 
clover, and also spreading bell flower, Campanula patula, known there 
since 1745. One of the best types of sessile oakwood is Benscliff Wood, 
at 570-700 ft. O.D., on Felsitic agglomerate and Beacon beds, with 
whortleberry and ling, and birch around the pillars of agglomerate, which 
form small kopje-like rocky knolls in the wood, with bluebell, soft grass, 
woodsorrel, sheep’s sorrel, heath bedstraw, woodsage, wood pimpernel, in 
wet places purple moor grass, etc. Pine, beech, and wych elm have been 
planted. 
(2) The next distinct type of rock includes the older limestones, or 
Carboniferous Limestone of Breedon, Breedon Cloud (the wood itself partly 
also on Red Marl, and Boulder Clay, or ash oak, with yellow star-of- 
Bethlehem, Solomon’s seal, butterfly orchid, giant bellflower, hybrid 
cowslip—primrose, often called ‘oxlip,’ etc.), Barrow Hill, Osgathorpe, 
Gracedieu. This is not a pure limestone, but an earthy magnesian lime- 
stone of a creamy-buff colour, not blue like the typical limestone at 
Calke and Ticknall, just over the Derby border. 
At Breedon Hill old quarry, on the limestone grassland formed on it at 
380 ft. O.D., a typical limestone flora is developed, including musk 
thistle, mountain flax, lady’s bedstraw, wild thyme, mullein, sheep’s 
fescue, Keeleria, white bryony, stork’s bill, cudweed, biting stonecrop, 
wild parsley, white campion, rue-leaved saxifrage (growing on the rocks), 
wall rue fern, Burnet saxifrage, musk mallow, perforate St. John’s wort, 
harebell, etc.; and on similar rocks at Barrow Hill (280 ft. O.D.), 
oxtongue, marjoram, wood reed grass, creeping rest-harrow, barren 
strawberry, quaking grass, etc. 
(3) On the third type of soil, sandy as a whole, in the Coal-Measure area, 
around Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the woods such as South Wood, Lount 
Wood, Ashby Old Parks, Spring Wood, Coleorton, The Smoile, etc., are 
of the sandy oakwood type, with pedunculate oak, hazel, bluebell, soft 
grass, woodsage, foxglove, common speedwell, rosebay, woodsorrel, etc., 
and in peaty pools, common loosestrife, wood reed grass, tussock sedge, 
creeping forget-me-not, Carex Pseudocyperus, etc. 
One of the most interesting areas in the county is on the peat and 
alluvium formed on Coal Measures at Moira Reservoir, there being aquatic 
and marsh formation, alder willow and fen carr, oak-birch heath, and 
formerly calluna heath to the west, where purple heather, ling, etc., 
grew. The very rare Tofieldia palustris was found here in 1820 by Dr. J. 
Moore, and was a relic of the Arctic and montane flora which extended 
south in the Glacial period, and on retreat of the ice was only able to 
persist at the higher altitudes formed by the Pennine Chain, of which 
Charnwood Forest and its adjacent north-west area is a prolongation. 
This is also the only locality for the pillwort, and the sole station for 
