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The Herbaria of The Essex Field Club
BY BERNARD T. WARD
Apart from some minor notes of additions to the collections of plants,
no published note on the Herbaria of the Club has appeared since 1911,
when the Curator gave brief details of the state of the herbaria (E.N. 16,
216, 1911). During the past three years a considerable amount of work
has been carried out on the collections in an attempt to restore them to
"reference" condition. A great deal still remains to be done before they
can be considered to be in first-class order. This opportunity has been
taken to review the position following a request from The Botanical Society
of the British Isles for details of the collections for record purposes. The
value of compiling an index of herbaria on a national scale cannot be
over-estimated, and in the course of extracting details from various sources
for this scheme, some points have come to light which may be of interest
to members and others desiring to use the herbaria. The following account
and summary is therefore given for the dual purpose of assisting botanists
using the herbaria and also to provide a reference index to the origins of
the collection. The circumstances regarding the establishment of the
Passmore Edwards Museum in which they are housed has already been
adequately described in .4 Short History of the Essex Field Club by the
late Percy G. Thompson, F.L.S., and need not be reviewed again here
(E.N. 22, 269, 1929).
All the Club's collections have been acquired since the formation of the
parent body, The Epping Forest and County of Essex Field Naturalists'
Club, in 1880. but unfortunately no detailed and dated record of the herbaria
as such seems to have been kept, and many of the published notes relating
to the various acquisitions are extremely scanty in character. No details
of the number of plants or sheets included in any addition appear to have
been published, and details as to the circumstances are generally sparse
and can only be dated by means of the date of publication of the part of
the Essex Naturalist in which they appeared. Sometimes a brief reference
in the Annual Report of the Council records the addition of a collection,
presumably during the year to which the report relates, but, even so, it
is not always clear that such is the case.
Towards the end of the 1920's, possibly in 1927, the late Miss Elsie
Greaves, who was then Assistant Librarian, commenced a file in which were
stored those letters and other details relating in part to the plants added
to the collections but also including some valuable facts concerning the
later additions. Miss Greaves also compiled a list of the published notes
in the Essex Naturalist which had any bearing on the subject. The following
information includes the references from this file, together with other
details which it has been possible to trace from other sources in the course
of compiling the notes for the National Index. Whilst every care has
been taken to check the details given, it is known that many omissions
have necessarily been made. In some cases it has been found that a strong
inference of the accuracy can be drawn from details given on the herbarium
sheets, and where this is so the details have been included, although
subsequent amendment may be required. The investigation has also
brought to light the fact that there does not appear to be in existence a
complete list of the names of all those who have at any time been a member
of the Club since its foundation.