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NOTES—ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.
has maintained itself in the same spot for at least forty-
three years.—Fred. J. Chittenden, Technical Laboratories,
Chelmsford, April 18th, 1904,
Surviving London "Wild Flowers.—In the Times, of
October 17th, 1903, Mr. C. J. Cornish has the following
interesting letter :—
" Though the author of the Flora Londinensis would no longer find the
rare plants which in his clay grew in Lambeth Marsh, the number of wild
flowers still found in the London area is much larger than would be readily
believed. That this is so is clear from a remarkable collection of the wild flowers
remaining in Fulham, a London borough of some 250,000 inhabitants, made by
Mr. W. Clarkson Birch, and presented by him to the Field Club of St. Paul's
School. The collection, which is only of leaves and flowers, not of the roots of
the plants, was made in a twelvemonth, and contains no less than 130 varieties of
flowering plants, though the market gardens, for which Fulham was famous,
have almost disappeared, and bricks and mortar are rapidly taking their places.
It would puzzle most people to guess where these flowers could have found
room to grow. Fortunately there is nothing which many flowers like so much
as a rubbish heap or a bit of waste ground. As the market gardens or sites of
old houses are taken up for building and enclosed, but before operations
actually begin, the flowers and plants rise up to take what fancy might describe
as their last farewell to London. The sides of reservoirs are also homes for
London flowers. But among their best retreats are the banks of the London
river, where many of the water plants still survive, and the bank flowers are
recruited by seeds washed down from the upper Thames. From the river bank
came the poisonous hemlock, dropwort, two kinds of pepperwort, several kinds of
cresses, and gipsywort, with nettle-shaped leaves and white flowers. On a
reservoir embankment, lately made, were quantities of greater skull-cap, with blue
tubular flowers, and a specimen of the great willow herb and purple loosestrife.
I have seen plants of the former growing abundantly in the foreyard of an old
house, which was set aside to be pulled down near the Hammersmith Road. A
balsam called "touch-me-not," because the pods when ripe open with a
spring when touched, and eject the seeds, is also found there. It is said to have
become naturalised on the banks of the Wey. If so, possibly its seeds have
passed from the Wey to the Thames, and from the Thames to Fulham. But the
wanderings of plants are illustrated in a remarkable fashion by two species in
this collection—one called Galinisoa parviflora, and the other, a very remark-
able plant, Tetragonia crystallina, a native of Chile. Its leaves are coated
with what look like spangles of ice crystal, from which its name is derived.
Both plants were found by Mr. Birch growing on a rubbish heap near the
Crab Tree, famed in accounts of the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. A
specimen of the Aster tripolium, or sea Starwort, was found growing by the
river, a plant usually found on salt marshes, and plentiful at Canvey Island, at
the river's mouth. How did it get to Fulham ? The purple-flowered lucerne
grows on the reservoir banks in abundance. Even the harebell was found, and
cuckoo flower, bristly ox-tongue, self-heal, scarlet pimpernel, crane's bill,
mallow, and the London rocket are among other flowers in the list."