84
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
Viola hirta. "Never saw this wild—doubt its being found here.
This may be erased." Later, however, Forster himself records this plant
''in flower, in a field on the right-hand side of the Lane leading from Hale-
end to Chingford Hatch, opposite the Larks, several plants, 16 April
1826."
Solidago virgaurea. "Suspect this an error."
Myrica gale. "Planted no doubt."
Convallaria multiflora [Polygonatum multiflorum]. "Planted probably
or escaped from some garden."
Against the printed record of Polypodium fragile [since re-
cognised as being Cystopteris alpina, Desv.], growing "in a wall
before Mr. Story's house, in the lane leading from the Lea Bridge
Road to Leyton Church," Forster comments: "This is thot
not to be P. fragile. See English Botany No. [163] under the
name of Cyathea incisa, taken from specimens from the Wall
mentioned." He notes "several specimens 1787, D° 1794."
and "Many plants on the wall both sides the gate 8th Augt
1814." (Plate VII.)
This last record deserves further comment, on account of
its unique character. The Alpine Bladder Fern was admitted
into the British flora on the strength of its occurrence on the
wall at Leyton and nowhere else in these islands. Sir W. J.
Hooker records (in his "British Ferns," 1861, where he gives a
plate [Plate 24] of the species) that Edward Forster took him
early in the 19th century to see the plant growing in its one
station, and confirms its identification as C. alpina and notes
that it was "apparently wild"; but at the same time gives as
his verdict "there is too much reason to suspect that it had been
planted." Gibson in his "Flora of Essex," 1862, remarks in his
preface: "Cystopteris alpina has been admitted into the British
Floras from an Essex station, but it has no claim to be reckoned
a native plant": and elsewhere (p. 398), he states that "a MS.
note, apparently written by T. F. Forster about 1778, in the
"Plantae Woodfordienses," is the earliest known notice of it."
The MS. note referred to is of course one afterwards printed in T.
F. Forster's "Additions to Warner's 'Plantae Woodfordienses'"
of 1784, and cannot be the MS. notes of Benjamin Forster which
we are now considering, and which are, of course, subsequent
to the publication of the "Additions." Before Gibson's time
the wall at Leyton had been demolished and the one habitat