243
THE TURF AND WEEDS OF AN OLD
LEYTONSTONE GARDEN.
By G. LISTER, F.L.S.
[Read January 27th, 1934.]
OUR house, 871, High Road, Leytonstone (formerly called
Sycamore House) goes back, we are told, in its oldest
part, to the reign of Queen Anne, or at latest to that of George I.
It stands on old Thames gravels, 100 feet above sea level, and
is only a few hundred yards away from what is still Forest land.'
The owner of the house had the rights of a Commoner, and my
father, who bought the property in 1856, was entitled to graze
a certain number of cattle on the Forest and to acquire fagots
for use as peasticks. So it comes about that the plants forming
the turf of our lawn are mostly those that we find on the less
disturbed turf of the Forest to-day. We find also that where
our ground has been considerably disturbed, as in removing
an old Rhododendron bed, and in remaking a rock garden, several
plants characteristic of the moorland vegetation of the Forest
have appeared.
At the beginning of the Great War we had our pasture (of
about two acres) ploughed up ; part we retained for our own use,
and part we divided into allotments, to be let to certain of our
neighbours who were anxious to grow their own vegetables. It
was not surprising that when the war ended the allotment-
holders wished to retain their holdings ; so the allotments remain,
subject to their being properly tended. The varied crops grown
there have led to the introduction of a number of weeds ; some
are those commonly found on cultivated ground, some are casuals
or aliens which come and go and rarely survive more than one
season. In this way our list of weeds has been greatly enriched.
The plants mentioned in this paper may therefore be grouped
under three headings ; lawn plants, 28 species ; plants appearing
on soil disturbed only at long intervals, 5 species ; weeds on culti-
vated and waste ground, about 100 species.
Lawn (90 by 30 yards in greatest extent).
The plants forming the turf of an old lawn are those which
have been able to survive weekly mowings all through the
summer for very many years—in the case of our lawn probably
for two hundred years. They are perennials with creeping stems,