History of botanical investigation
Synopsis.
The earliest
explorers.
Resident botanists of the 17th and 18th centuries.
The first Floras.
Local Floras and Victorian collectors.
The emergence of ecology.
Post-war recording and the electronic age.
The first published records of plants from v.c. 59 are believed to be those in Gerard’s Herball, dating from 1597. Cheshire-born John Gerard (1545-1612) became Lord Burghley’s superintendent of gardens in the Strand, London and at his country estate Theobalds, Hertfordshire. He was later appointed as curator of a physic garden belonging to the Royal College of Physicians. More records were added to the second edition of the Herball by its editor, Thomas Johnson (1600/04-1644) who died in the Civil War.
The earliest known botanical expedition to Lancashire was made by the Essex curate John Ray (1627-1705), recognised by Oliver (1913) as one of the ‘makers of English botany’ who incorporated several records from Lancashire – such as the Cloudberry Rubus chamaemorus - into his Catalogus Plantarum Angliae (1670, second edition 1677). Some of his manuscript notes of Lancashire records have been preserved in a copy of his Synopsis kept at Oxford University. A little-known fact is that one of Ray’s major collectors in northern England, Thomas Willisel (?1620-c. 1675) was almost certainly born at Briercliffe near Burnley. His activities as a collector for the Royal Society, Robert Morison (1620-1683) of Oxford, Christopher Merrett (1614-1695) of the London College of Physicians’ Museum and Library, and William Sherard (1658/9-1728) made him undoubtedly Lancashire’s most successful plant collector of the 17th century. His botanical activities were however curtailed by the Civil War, in which he served under Cromwell as a soldier. Some of his records were published in 1666 in Merrett’s Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum and thus antedate Ray’s publications.
The Pennines and coastal sand dunes were soon recognised as harbouring rare and unusual plants, and other explorers who passed through Lancashire on their travels included William Curtis (1746-1799), author of Flora Londinensis (1775-1798) and founder of the long-running periodical the Botanical Magazine (1787--). His destination was the Ingleborough area but he almost certainly travelled through Ribblesdale en route. A list of the plants growing around Ingleborough was published as a supplement to Flora Londinensis, but it contains no records which can be placed with certainty in v.c. 59.
Another mid-18th century traveller was the Yorkshire naturalist Thomas Bolton (1722-1778) who visited Pendle Hill and the Burnley area while collecting plants for the Leicestershire botanist Richard Pulteney (1730-1801). Letters from Bolton to Pulteney containing an account of his travels have been preserved in the Linnean Society of London. His younger brother James Bolton (1735-1799), better known as the Halifax mycologist, also visited Lancashire on several occasions and botanised around Winwick near Warrington, near Dunkenhalgh and Padiham, and on the wet heaths and dunes north of Liverpool in 1783. The banker and solicitor William Roscoe (1753-1831), founder of the Liverpool Botanic Garden, who helped organise the first open art show in Liverpool at which Bolton exhibited two of his botanical paintings, was thus indirectly responsible for his attendance and consequent discoveries. The second Lancashire record of Marsh Gentian Gentiana pneumonanthe was made at that time; it had previously been recorded from near Burnley by Christopher Merrett in his “bungling Pinax” (Ray’s phrase), almost certainly from information provided by Thomas Willisel (see above).
Resident botanists of the 17th and 18th centuries
The first botanical author resident in the County of Lancaster was Charles Leigh (1662-c. 1701) of Singleton in the Fylde (v.c. 60). His only major work was ‘The Natural History of Lancashire, Cheshire, and the Peak in Derbyshire; with an account of the British, Phenic, Armenian, Greek and Roman Antiquities found in those parts,’ published in 1700, and his account mainly focuses on the medicinal qualities of the flora, with few localized records, though he does mention the occurrence of Rugus chamaemorus from Pendle Hill. William Harrison (fl. 1720-1750) of Manchester was a tradesman who possessed a large herbarium and corresponded with Jacob Dillenius of Oxford Botanic Garden. Thomas Bolton makes some interesting observations on this collection, which he observed during a visit to Manchester, in a letter to Richard Pulteney. The herbarium was once preserved in Manchester City Library but is sadly no longer extant at that location.
The Warrington horticulturist John Blackburne (1694-1786) had a rich collection of plants in his garden, including some native species, but it is not apparent from the published catalogue (Neal 1779) where they came from. The so-called Irish Ivy was brought into cultivation at Orford Hall, Blackburne’s residence; it derives its name from the Ireland family of Hale, Lancashire, and not from the island of Ireland.
Many resident botanists were artisans, and in the early 19th century they helped found a growing number of local botanical societies which facilitated the exchange of floristic information. John Dewhurst (fl. 1750s-c. 1835), a fustian-cutter of Salford near Manchester became President of the Manchester Society of Botanists. He was friendly with James Crowther (1768-1847), a weaver and porter of Manchester who also corresponded with William Roscoe of Liverpool. Crowther supplied plant records not only to John Hull (1761-1843), a Manchester gynaecologist and author of a British Flora published in 1799, but also to J.B. Wood for Flora Mancuniensis (1840), described below. Kendal-born George Crosfield (1754-1820), a sugar merchant, collected plants in Lancashire and Cheshire. His herbarium passed to his son, also named George Crosfield (see below), who was born in Warrington but moved to Liverpool in 1819.
The Liverpool district experienced a surge in population in the later part of the 18th century and this was reflected in the growth of interest in botany and horticulture. Prior to the foundation of the Liverpool Botanic Garden by William Roscoe in 1802, some of his friends and colleagues had already started to explore the coastal flora in the hinterland of Liverpool. Dr John Bostock (1774-1846), one of the founders of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, discovered some novelties in the area which he communicated to Sir James Edward Smith (1759-1828). These were published in Smith’s Flora Britannica and in Sowerby and Smith’s English Botany. The best known of Bostock’s discoveries was Erythraea latifolia Sm. (now treated as Centaurium latifolium), the Broad-leaved Centaury, which became extinct in the later part of the 19th century. Later the first curator of the Botanic Garden, John Shepherd (c. 1764-1835), also communicated records to Smith.
There was also a growth
in interest in bryology at the start of the 19th century. Edward Hobson (1782-1830)
of Manchester, a tea merchant, issued a set of exsiccatae under the title Musci
Britannici between 1818 and 1822; many of the specimens came from the region.
One of the century’s leading amateur bryologists, William Wilson (1799-1871)
was a native of Warrington where he practised as a solicitor. His Bryologia
Britannica (1855) gives numerous records from the vice-county, and his extensive
correspondence, preserved in Warrington Museum, is a rich source of historical
information on the Lancashire botanists of the 19th century.
The first Floras
Although records from South Lancashire had been published in several national or regional treatments, mentioned above, the first Flora devoted to part of the Vice-County was published in 1810. A Calendar of Flora, composed during the year 1809 at Warrington, Lat. 53° 30’ was written by a Quaker botanist, Charles Crosfield (1785-1847). Crosfield was also Secretary to Warrington Botanical Society, and his Calendar followed the systematic arrangement of Sir J.E. Smith’s Flora Britannica (1800-1804). A more comprehensive treatment was the Flora of Liverpool by linen merchant Thomas Batt Hall (1814-1886), published in 1839. The following year Flora Mancuniensis, or a catalogue of the flowering plants, the ferns and their allies, found (indigenous) within fifteen miles of Manchester was published in Halifax by the Yorkshire-born physician John Bland Wood (1813-1890) who also contributed to Joseph Dickinson’s Flora of Liverpool (1851) – see below. Wood’s flora incorporates records made by Leo Grindon, Richard Buxton and G. Crozier.
Local Floras and Victorian collectors
The Manchester area was the subject of numerous local Floras. One of the contributors to Flora Mancuniensis was Richard Buxton (1786-1865), a children’s shoemaker from Prestwich, whose Botanical Guide to the Flowering plants, Ferns, Mosses and Algae found within sixteen miles of Manchester was published in 1849. A second edition was issued in 1859 under the slightly different title Botanical Guide . . . eighteen miles of Manchester. Leo Grindon’s The Manchester Flora (1859) was a particularly thorough treatment for the period. Leopold Hartley Grindon (1818-1904) was born in Bristol where he helped to found the delightfully named Philo-botanical Society of Bristol. He moved to Manchester in 1838 and became a cashier, later founding (and becoming President of) the Manchester Field Naturalists’ Society. Grindon’s herbarium, which is far more than merely a collection of pressed plants as it contains botanical drawings, press cuttings and other ephemera , is preserved in the Manchester Museum.
The first Flora of Preston and Neighbourhood appeared between 1858 and 1865, with a second edition in 1903. Other urban areas in the northern part of the vice-county were overlooked during this period with the exception of some articles in periodicals. A Flora of the Stonyhurst District by J. Gerard & C.A. Newdigate (2nd edition in 1891) covered both sides of the vice-county boundary in the vicinity of this famous Roman Catholic boarding school and incorporated earlier lists (cited in Simpson’s Biblioographical Index).
Members of the urban middle classes were increasingly able, in the latter part of the 19th century, to use the newly created railway infrastructure to travel on day trips to areas of botanical interest in the countryside around the major conurbations. One such ‘gentleman botanist’ was Rev. Henry Hugh Higgins (1814-1893) who became President of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society and was an early Trustee of the Liverpool Museum. One of his publications in the Society’s journal was “A list of some of the principal stations for botanising in the neighbourhood of Liverpool” (1858). Best known as a paleobotanist, he claimed to have delivered more than 20,000 sermons to the insane (as chaplain of the Rainhill Asylum near Liverpool). Higgins’ friend and contemporary, Frederick Price Marrat (1820-1904) was primarily a conchologist but also studied the mosses and liverworts of the area around Liverpool. He made several noteworthy discoveries of mosses new to Britain and to science, including Bryum calophyllum R.Br. and Bryum marratii which was named for him by William Wilson.
The first substantial Flora of Liverpool, published in 1851 (with a Supplement in 1855) was the work of Dr Joseph Dickinson (c. 1805-1865), born at Lamplugh in Cumbria who came as a lecturer in Botany to the Liverpool School of Medicine in 1839. This was followed by A Flora of the Liverpool District (1872-5) which was edited by Henry Smith Fisher (d. 1881) and Frederick Morgan Webb (1841-1880). Fisher’s occupation is unknown; Webb became Curator of the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Several Appendices to this Flora were published by Robert Brown (1839-1901) during the period 1875 to 1887; the book is often cited under the authorship of the Liverpool Naturalists’ Field Club, having been compiled as a result of the collective efforts of several of its botanically-inclined members.
The region continued to attract the attentions of cryptogamists, and despite the growing impact of air pollution some significant collections were amassed. Benjamin Carrington (1827-1893), born in Lincolnshire and a general practitioner, became medical officer of health in Eccles and was a noted liverwort specialist. He joined with James Alfred Wheldon (1862-1924), later a pharmacist in the prison service at Liverpool, and co-author of the Flora of West Lancashire, in issuing sets of bound liverwort exsiccatae containing many specimens from the southern half of the county.
Although Manchester and Liverpool were well supplied with Floras by the latter part of the 19th century, J. Cosmo Melvill’s Flora of Prestwich dates from 1905 when it appeared as part of History and traditions of Prestwich ... With the Geology of the district. and the Flora of Prestwich which was edited by J.R. Ragdale. John Nowell’s posthumous Flora of Todmorden appeared in parts in the Lancashire Naturalist in 1907 and 1908. Nowell (1802-1867) was a handloom weaver and self-taught naturalist who became one of the country’s leading bryologists. He was commemorated by Mitten in the genus Nowellia. Widnes had to wait until 1912 for its first Flora of Widnes, published by the Widnes and District Field Club. Frederick Williamson (dates unknown) published a Flora of the Rochdale district in 1913.
Merseyside was again the subject of a local flora when, in 1902, Dr Conrad Theodore Green (1863-1940) published his Flora of the Liverpool District; a second edition appeared in 1933. Green was well known in the area as a botanical photographer and lecturer. His Flora is notable for being copiously illustrated by original line drawings by Emily Margaret Wood (1865-1907), who was born in Calcutta and became a lecturer in Botany in Liverpool.
The early part of the 20th century was an active period for field study of the flora and the results were expressed in the growth in herbarium collections. Two of the most active collectors were Charles Bailey (1838-1924) and William Gladstone Travis (1877-1958). Bailey was primarily a businessman, being a director of Ralli Bros. (East India merchants) of Manchester; his herbarium forms the nucleus of the University of Manchester’s very large British holdings in the Manchester Museum. Travis, whose name is commemorated in the immediate forerunner to this work, Travis’s Flora of South Lancashire, was a Liverpool-born patent agent who held the post of Secretary of the South Lancashire Flora Committee from 1906 until the year before his death. Although Travis published an extensive series of articles on the local flora, some with an ecological slant, the work of his committee formed the basis of the Flora of the vice-county which eventually appeared in 1963 under the editorship of John P. Savidge, Vernon Hilton Heywood and Vera Gordon.
At the turn of the 20th century Universities were well established in Manchester and Liverpool. Charles Edward Moss (1870-1930) obtained the degree of D.Sc. from Manchester in 1907 and undertook some fieldwork in the region. This gave rise to an interest in what we would now call an autecological approach to the study of plant distribution, and this perspective was reflected in his ambitious (and uncompleted) Cambridge British Flora (1914-1920). Coincidentally another University of Manchester lecturer, Clive Stace, who later moved to Leicester, published the century’s last and most successful New Flora of the British Isles (1987, 2nd edition 1993?).
William Travis, mentioned above, made an intensive study of the flora of the Sefton coastal sand dunes and his paper Marram Grass and Dune Formation of the Lancashire Coast (1915) was a pioneering ecological study. Travis was also interested in paleoecology, and he and his wife (?C.B.) wrote an account of the plant remains in the post-glacial gravels at Seaforth, north of Liverpool, in 1913. Frederick William Holder (1891-1963) of Southport was another local naturalist who compiled a massive unpublished archive that included detailed phenological observations. This was deposited in Liverpool Museum. A large number of papers containing floristic records for v.c. 59 was published in the journal The North Western Naturalist (originally titled the Lancashire Naturalist), whose long-serving editor was Arthur Augustine Dallman (1883-1963).
The peat deposits of South Lancashire continued to provide a rich source of evidence for the reconstruction of post-glacial vegetation. Sir Harry Godwin (1901-1985), later a Professor at the University of Cambridge, published several papers based on the study of pollen grains in peat from the former moss and lake sediments on the site of the University of Liverpool campus.
John Dickinson Massey (1870-1943) was another author who published numerous papers in the 1920s and 1930s on aspects of the Flora of south-west Lancashire, with particular emphasis on introduced species. The subject of adventive plants has been intensively studied in this region, thanks to the rich supply of alien seeds imported with ship’s ballast, wool shoddy, the raw materials for wallpaper manufacture and other means. These studies were continued by the Preston botanist Alice E. Ratcliffe (d. 1974), whose extensive herbarium of alien plants is kept in World Museum Liverpool.
One extraordinary by-product of the industrial age was the heated waste water which certain factories discharged into local watercourses and canals. This created a microclimate in which exotic species throve, and South Lancashire provided several first records of aliens that were introduced into this rather unusual habitat. Ficus carica grew alongside the terminal section of the Leeds-Liverpool canal near the Tate and Lyle sugar refinery, which closed in 1981, and the alien aquatic flora of the Hollinwood and Droylsden canals, which included Lagarosiphon major, was first recorded in the 1930s.
Post-war recording and the electronic age
The resumption of field work after the Second World War coincided with the birth of the Botanical Society of the British Isles. This became a society more concerned with the study of plant distribution than its predecessor, the Botanical Exchange Club, which as its name suggests saw its raison d’être more as a forum for the exchange of preserved specimens. The historian of the Society, David Elliston Allen, was born in Southport and published a Flora of the Isle of Man in 1984; his remarkable paper on the Flora of the Liverpool Bombed Sites (1951) recognised the importance of what we might now refer to as the flora of Post-industrial Urban Britain. Miss Vera Gordon, who served as Secretary of the Liverpool Botanical Society since before the War, not only played a major role in the editing and publication of Travis’s Flora of South Lancashire but also, as the B.S.B.I.’s vice-county representative, was active in mapping plant distribution in the area on a 10 x 10 km grid basis. This work was published by the B.S.B.I. as the Atlas of the British Flora, edited by Dr Franklyn Perring and Dr Max Walters in 1962.
The Manchester area also saw a resurgence of fieldwork in the second half of the twentieth century. The creation of the Greater Manchester Metropolitan County Council in 1974 brought an enhanced appreciation of the natural environment by the strategic planning process, and some important surveys of sites of local and regional importance were carried out by Dr Ray Gemmell and associates. Amateur botanists such as the Rev. Shaw of Oldham continued to collect information on local plant occurrences, and Bruce Langridge prepared an interesting account of the Wild flowers of Oldham in 1996..
Museum-based recording was a feature of the early 1980s, partly funded by Manpower Services Commission schemes for combating unemployment. The earlier establishment of a North-west Biological Field Data Bank by Eric Greenwood in 1969 led to a more systematic collecting and archiving of site-based botanical records; this was partly superseded in 2007 by Merseyside BioBank, located at the National Wildflower Centre in Knowsley, which holds plant distribution records in electronic form.
John Edmondson