A HISTORY OF DEVONSHIRE 



and early ' seventies ' used to call a certain portion of Bitton, near the Shaldon Bridge, the wood, 

 and it is possible that the late Mrs. Gulson referred to this portion of the property in her 

 communication to Mr. Smith. It may have been that she wrrote to him the wood at Bitton 

 and that he abbreviated her words into Bitton Wood. My friend, who is a retired medical 

 man, had never heard of Gladiolus illyricus, and was surprised that the late Rev. R. Cresswell, 

 who botanized extensively, had never come across it, if it were to be met with in the locality 

 named.' 



The fingered sedge {Carex dtgitata) is given in the Student's Flora as extending to Devon ; 

 the only precise locality for it in the county appears to be ' copse close by Forde Bog ' on the 

 authority of Stewart's Handbook of the Torquay Flora, p. 142 ; the late Dr. Trimen saw 

 the specimen in C. Eyre Parker's herbarium at Torquay, and he considered it to be another 

 species, namely C. ovalis. The evidence therefore for the retention of C. dtgitata in our 

 county flora is insufficient. 



Mr. W. Botting Hemsley, F.R.S., the keeper of the Kew Herbarium, has favoured me 

 with the following notes on the wild vegetation of the immediate neighbourhood of Dart- 

 mouth and Kingswear in July 1902 : — 



' The lower Dart is not a rich district for the botanist, as there are neither open downs 

 nor commons, and the woods are mostly artificial ; characteristic coast plants too are almost 

 entirely wanting in consequence of the absence of conditions favourable to their existence ; 

 but the hedgerow vegetation is perhaps unusually varied and is this season very luxuriant and 

 beautiful, being in no way marred by dust. 



' Conspicuous and abundant above all other herbaceous plants is Centranthus ruber, locally 

 named " Pride of Dartmouth " ; it not only grows on waysides, wastes, banks, walls, railway 

 cuttings and embankments, but it extends for miles along the hedgerows and is evidently on 

 the increase ; it was perhaps most effective in the old workings of the stone quarry at the 

 junction of the roads on the hill above Kingswear church, where it covered the waste with 

 a dense growth between 2 and 3 feet high and bore clusters of flowers from 6 inches to a 

 foot in length ; intermixed with the ordinary red there was suflScient of the white-flowered 

 variety to form a very pleasing contrast ; there was also a very striking edging of it over- 

 hanging a very considerable length of a terrace-wall on the road between the quarry and the 

 cemetery. The red valerian is here a colonist of an exceedingly vigorous type, spreading and 

 increasing with the same rapidity as Epilobium angustifolium does in the south-eastern counties, 

 though it does not enter the woods ; of the Epilobium I did not see a single plant in this part 

 of Devonshire. 



' Similarly the abundance of Tamus communis (black bryony) in the hedgerows caused one 

 to miss Bryonia, with which it is commonly associated in some parts of England, Sussex for 

 example. 



' The small wood by the road leading down to Kingswear cemetery, at the top of the 

 creek, is probably natural, and consists largely of stunted oak {^ercus sessiliflora), interspersed 

 with large weather-beaten hollies of great age ; ash, beech and hazel are also present, and 

 elder abundant and conspicuous, being in full flower. The profusion and size of the honey- 

 suckles on the shrubs and small trees are remarkable ; bracken form the greater part of the 

 undergrowth, and richly coloured foxgloves abound, especially in the half open spaces ; seen 

 from the road in varying lights these glades are very effective. The wood on the right bank 

 of the creek, I was told, was partly planted, though it consists mainly of native trees ; I found 

 no rare plants in it, but I was struck by the large size of such common things as Heracleum, 

 Angelica, Cnicus palustris, Galium Aparine, Scrophularia nodosa and many others, and I never saw 

 Cotyledon so large ; isolated plants of the latter were 3 feet high, forming a pyramid of branches 

 supported by a dense tuft of unusually large radical leaves, with stalks from 9 inches to a foot long. 



' I do not know the names of brambles, but I distinguished only three obviously distinct 

 sorts ; the commonest was a very ornamental kind, with robust habit and nearly orbicular 

 abruptly acuminate leaflets, dark glossy green above and silvery beneath, and large pink flowers 

 in very large broad clusters ; the next in degree of predominance was a white-flowered sort, 

 with obovate bright green leaflets something like what has been called corylifolius ; the least 

 common of the three was relatively small and slender, with small white flowers in elongated 

 panicles and remarkable in having very long narrow, almost caudate, sepals. Incomplete 

 specimens of these Rubi were submitted to the Rev. W. Moyle Rogers, who thought the 

 first might be Rubus robustus, P. J. Muell. ; the last a curious state or form of his own 

 angustifolius (a variety of R. leucostachys, Schleich.) ; but the second one he would not venture 

 to name from flowering specimens only. 



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