HISTORY OF ESSEX BOTANY.
By Prof. G. S. BOULGER, F.L.S., F.G.S., Vice-President.
Part I.
The Botanists of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries.
A CLUB such as ours, the object of which is to record the
Natural History of a county, must be interested in the
gradual introduction of new plants and animals into the area it
investigates, and in the growth of our knowledge concerning
them. My present object is in the main the growth of our
knowledge of the Essex Flora. It may be possible to some
extent to separate the indigenous plants of the county from those
introduced by man, and to discover approximately the dates of
these additions to our objects of study. This I propose doing,
on the lines of the valuable appendices in Mr. Gibson's Flora, in
the fourth part of my paper. Perhaps also a good deal of matter
of biographical interest might be collected with reference to
botanists resident in Essex, whose work did not relate to the
county ; but, as I thought it advisable to limit my enquiry, it is
a history of Essex Botany rather than of Essex plants, or of
Botany in Essex.
It may be a subject of congratulation to us that this history
of Essex Botany is conterminous with that of the science in
Britain generally. We are not now concerned with plants that
may have have been introduced by Romans in the first century,
by the missionaries in the seventh century, by Normans in the
eleventh century, or by the monks during the following five
hundred years,1 nor with any records previous to the revival of
learning in the sixteenth century. The history of Essex Botany
begins with William Turner, justly styled "the Father of English
Botany," for, though we have no distinct statement that Turner
was ever himself in the county, he mentions four species as
growing in Essex, and most of his records, unlike those of his
successors, seem to have been the result of personal observation.
Commencing then with Turner, I find that our subject divides
itself chronologically into three divisions : first, the botanists of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Turner, Gerard,
Johnson, Parkinson, How, Robert Turner, Merrett, Ray,
1 See "The Influence of Man upon the Flora of Essex," Trans. Essex Field Club
iv, p. 13.