WHITWELL : NOTES ON SETTLE PLANTS. 



Notes on Settle Plants. — Yorkshire botanists must, many of them, 

 have read Mr. Craig-Christie's notes {Natttralist, August 1888, p. 225) with 

 surprise, and particularly that throwing doubt upon the presence of the Holly Fern 

 near Settle. The name of the late Mr. John Tatham, of Settle, has long been 

 held, by competent judges, to be an amply sufficient guarantee for any record to 

 which it is attached, and I am sorry that Mr, Craig-Christie should have so 

 expressed himself as to seem to throw doubt upon his accuracy in identifying 

 Aspidiu?n lonchitis Sw., and also upon that of the careful author of the ' Flora 

 of West Yorkshire,' merely because a tyro in his first year usually blunders over 

 var. lonchitidioides oiA. aciileatnm. 



As a matter of fact, I have in my possession four fronds of A. lo)ichitis, given 

 to me twenty years ago by my late friend, Mr. Silvanus Thompson, as having been 

 collected at Settle by his father-in-law, Mr. Tatham, and to make assurance 

 doubly sure, these have been submitted to Mr. F. A. Lees ; also, Mr. John 

 Tatham's own herbarium contains an 1844 specimen marked 'Attermire,' and 

 another, dated 1845, from ' Settle Scars.' In Mr. Silvanus Thompson's collection 

 is one from ' Attermire Scars,' collected July loth, 1847 '■> Mrs, Silvanus Thompson 

 recollects gathering the species, which then grew in some abundance on Attermire,. 

 with her father, Mr. Tatham, more than forty years ago. Mr. Wilson, gardener 

 at Feizor, frequently gathered A. lonchitis on Moughton Scars between 1840 and 

 1883 ; his grandson, Mr. Robert Wilson of Settle, obtained it there in 1883, and 

 on Attermire in 1882. Dr. Buck, of Settle, has fronds gathered on Attermire by 

 the late Mr. Joseph Jackson during the period 1870-5 ; and Mr. Herbert Sturdy, 

 of Settle, states that he has collected the fern on Attermire and other hills above 

 Settle, in most years between 1874 and 1887. Dr. Silvanus Phillips Thompson, 

 the well-known principal of the Technical College, personally obtained true 

 A. lonchitis on Moughton Fell a few years ago ; he also remembers his father and 

 grandfather (Mr. Tatham) bringing specimens home from Attermire. Other 

 evidence might be cited, but I will only add that a fresh frond of A. lonchitis lies 

 before me, just received from the Misses Thompson, which is from a root obtained on 

 Moughton Scar a year or so ago, by Mr, Timothy Green, a Settle gardener. The 

 fern has, however, become very rare, through the rapacity of collectors for sale. 



Then we have the personal evidence of Mr, F. A. Lees, who — as shown in the 

 'Flora' — met with a few plants at Linn Gill, Ribblehead (also a locality fairly 

 within the Settle district), in 1879. Surely he does not need the tyro's caution 

 against lobattivi and similar forms ! 



I have also just learned that Mr. Lees has received within the last month, 

 from Mr. R. E. Leach, M.A., of Beccles, a newly-gathered frond, just beginnings 

 to show fruit, only 4 in. long by f-in. broad, of true A. lonchitis, obtained by 

 that gentleman himself on a scar or fell near Feizor {not Moughton Scar). — 



Nephrodiiini cemnhim Baker. No specimens of this fern are found in Herb, 

 Tatham or Thompson. As was already remarked in the ''Flora,' this fact is- 

 suggestive of error. But, on the other hand, Mr. Newman distinctly names Settle 

 as a locality for N. (e)mihwt {recurviim) in his ' British Ferns.' And Mr. J. G. 

 Baker, F.R.S.,who was intimately acquainted with the Tatham-Thompson family,, 

 without any expression of misgiving, in ' Supplement Flora of Yorkshire ' (1854),. 

 p. 142, quotes Mr. Newman's name in conjunction with Mr. Tatham's as having; 

 certified a record for 'hills about Settle.' That accurate cryptogamist, Dr, B, 

 Carrington, in his and Prof, Miall's 'West Riding Flora' of 1862, gives an 

 additional confirmatory record — 'Settle,' 



Thalictrum alpiniini L, Negative evidence has usually little weight against a 

 positive statement, but I may say that in the course of various wanderings over the 

 Settle hills (and Penyghent) in search oi Hieracia and other plants, I met with nO' 

 trace of this. Were I to see it there, my first thought would be — who planted it? 



Sir J, D. Hooker (' Student's Flora,' ed, iii, p. 2) gives for habitat ' alpine and 

 sub-alpine bogs.' Mr. Lees tells me that he has collected T. a/pinia/i in North 

 Yorkshire (Cronkley Fell), Westmorland ( Helvellyn), and Durham (Widdy Bank), 

 and in each case it grew in peaty wet ground, best described as boggy, though it was 

 most frequent by the stony rillets on Widdy Bank. Surely, therefore, it would be 

 most natural to look for the plant in similar places in West Yorkshire. May I suggest 

 that possibly dwarfed examples of T. win us var. montanuin, growing on vSettle Crags, 

 have simulated luxuriant Scottish forms of alpimon. — William \Vhit\vell. ; 



Oct. 1888. 



