66 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF NOTTINGHAM AND DISTRICT 



lii. THE BOTANY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



BY 



J. W. CARR, M.A., F.L.S., F.G.S., F.R.E.S., 



EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, NOTTINGHAM. 



The history of Nottinghamshire botany begins with the publication in 

 1650 of the Phytologia Britannica by William How, but only three species 

 are here recorded for the county, on the authority of Mr. Stonehouse. 

 These are Dianthus deltoides, Antennaria dioica, and a grass which 

 was probably Melica nutans. Although seen by later observers these are 

 all now apparently extinct in the county. In 1666 Christopher Merrett, 

 in his Pinax, adds Sparganium minimum and a white-flowered form of 

 Galeopsis versicolor. These were probably found by Thomas WilliseU, 

 who travelled extensively in search of plants and is known to have visited 

 Nottingham about this time : he was the first botanist to observe Silene 

 nutans on the walls of Nottingham Castle. .The great naturalist John Ray 

 was visiting his friend and co-worker Francis Willughby at WoUaton 

 Hall in 1670 and noticed many Nottinghamshire plants, among which 

 were Silene nutans, previously discovered by WilliseU, Cerastium arvense, 

 Teesdalia nudicaulis, Verbascum pulverulentum and Apera spica-venti. 

 No further additions of any importance were announced until the publi- 

 cation, in 1738, of Deering's Catalogus Stirpium, etc., or Catalogue of 

 Plants naturally growing about Nottingham. 



Charles Deering, M.D., was born in Saxony, probably in 1695, and 

 after graduating in physic at Leyden came to England and practised for 

 some years in London and elsewhere. He settled in Nottingham in 1736, 

 and died there in 1749; he was buried in St. Peter's churchyard. The 

 Catalogue enumerates some 840 flowering plants, ferns, mosses, fungi, etc., 

 but includes some cultivated plants, while a few were erroneously indenti- 

 fied and others are unrecognisable or are unimportant varieties of other 

 species. 



A few additional Nottinghamshire plants are recorded by R. Pulteney 

 in a paper on the rarer plants growing about Loughborough, published 

 in Vol. XLIX of the Philosophical Transactions and repeated in Nicol's 

 History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (1795). 



The first four decades of the nineteenth century were notable for a 

 remarkable activity in botanical investigation in the county, and no fewer 

 than three important works on the Flora of the county were published 

 during this period. The first to appear was the Flora Nottinghamiensis 

 of Thomas Ordoyno, issued in 1807, which comprised the flowering plants 

 and ferns, and included many species unknown to Deering. Of still 

 greater importance were the works of Jowett and Howitt. 



Thomas Jowett was born at Colwick near Nottingham in 1801, and 

 practised as a surgeon in Nottingham: he died in 1832 at the early age 



