1 68 Crossland and NeedJuun : The Plants of Pecket Wood. 



With a thin bedding- of soil : — 

 Ceratodon purpureus. 



Encalypta streptocarpa. 

 Leptobryum pyriforme. 

 Barbula fallax. 

 Bryum pallens. 

 Bryum arg-enteum. 



Tortula muralis. 

 Tortula subulata. 

 Barbula rigidiila. 



Barbula unguiculata. 



Barbula convoluta. 

 Many of the above grow in other situations as well. The 

 last often covers long strips of ground at the base of roadside 

 walls. 



The lower portion is an ordinary mixed deciduous wood of 

 a moister nature than the upper, but not sufficiently moist to 

 exclude either bilberry or ling. In addition to the small rills 

 which enter beneath the road at the top, the surface water from 

 the road is run into the wood at pretty regular intervals ; these 

 places are marked by a sandbank in the wood behind the 

 wall. Taken altogether, it is at a mean between a dry and 

 a damp wood. Bracken, ling, bilberry, hair-grass, and their 

 companions oak and birch all find their way down here and 

 thrive well ; in fact, the two latter with sycamore embrace by 

 far the major part of the timber trees. The other timber trees 

 are beech, wych-elm and ash, sparingly distributed. The 

 smaller trees and the shrubs, all mostly near the Pecket Road, 

 are mountain-ash, bird-cherry, hazel, elder, guelder rose and 

 wild rose. There is a much more varied flora than in the upper 

 part. The south end is very open ; the few trees left are oak, 

 and these wide apart ; here the ground flora is anything but typical 

 of a woodland. Its present open character has encouraged 

 Anthrisciis sylvestris to enter into keen competition with 

 hair-grass, spreading soft-grass {Holcus mollis), stitch wort 

 [Stellaria Holostea), hedge woundwort {Stachys sylvatica), etc. 

 The wood is being still further opened out. In February and 

 March last year quite a quantity of oak, birch, sycamore, and 

 an ash or two were cut down. How this will affect shade- 

 loving plants remains to be seen. Most of the trees felled 

 were of medium growth : oak, 25-28 inches in girth; sycamore, 

 32-36 inches, 3 feet from the ground, birch much less. The 

 sycamores in wet places near the water-runs appeared to have 

 grown quickest, their rings of wood being much coarser. The 

 woodman stated that this is usually so, so far as his observa- 

 tions go. The newly cut stumps, of the birches especially, 

 furnished most interesting object-lessons of the power of root- 

 pressure in forcing up the mineral-charged water or sap taken 

 up by the living cells of the root-hairs. The same day or the 



Naturalist, 



