48
THE GARDENS OF WARLEY PLACE.
rare British plant or an interesting alien. Some species have
"crossed" with other plants, affording most erratic results, ex-
tremely puzzling to the British botanist. This wild garden is
beautiful at all times of the year, and the surroundings lend
themselves charmingly to the natural effect. Bounded on the
east by a wood, the view to the south is typically Essex, afford-
ing a landscape such as Wimperis loved to paint, widening over
a broad stretch of country away over the marshes and across the
Thames to the Kentish Hills. There is that mysterious blue-steel
haze so often seen in Essex, and which is, perhaps, peculiar
to the Eastern Counties, giving a character and charm to the
landscape which cannot be surpassed. It is quite impossible
to enumerate the plants naturalized in this wild-garden, but
some thousand species are represented, and many have come
from great distances to their new home. And often a plant
believed to have been smothered out is again found springing
up in some unexpected spot.
There is the Teazle, the cultivated variety of which is used
in dressing cloth, though now almost superseded by machinery.
Bupleurum falcatum, our Essex rarity, from Norton Mandeville,
which, though scarce in England, is common on the continent.
Lathyrus tuberosus from Fyfield, probably first introduced into
Essex by Dutch labourers employed in embanking the marshes
of the Thames,5 and the third rare Essex plant, honoured with
coloured illustrations by Gibson in his Flora of Essex, while
Lathyrus hirsutus is here from Rayleigh with L. nissolia. The
"Bardfield Oxlip" of Essex has crossed with some Ural Mountain
Primulas, and so created a beautiful and striking race of brilliantly
coloured flowers. Osmunda regalis and Lastraea thelypteris from
Warley Woods, with Convallaria majalis and Chrysosplenium
oppositifolium from the same locality. "White-Heather" from
Coombe Green, with Scabiosa Succisa and white forms of Ononis
arvensis and 0. spinosa from Upminster Common. Ulex nanus and
Hypericum pulchrum from Warley Common; Sedum telephium
from the Magpie Wood, with Prunus padus and Pyrus torminalis
and P. aria ; the latter from near Felix Hall. Lamium galeob-
dolon still grows where Gibson found it in 1862, and Sonchus
palustris has been introduced from marshes of the Medway.
5 "Lathyrus Tuberosus in Britain," by Miller Christy, Journ. of Botany, vol. xlviii.,
pp. 170-177.