176 On the Species of the Genus Primula in Essex-.
Mr. E. G. Varenne, of Kelvedon, who has been most kind
in giving me information, writes—"Primula elatior, Jacq.,
has not been found about Kelvedon, Halstead, Braintree, or
Coggeshall that I know of. Certainly Mr. Bentall found the
plant sparingly in a meadow near Grinstead Green. I have
the plant from Wethersfield in 1877, and collected it in
meadows above Codham Mill, Wethersfield, in 1879. I may
say that Bentall's Grinstead Green locality is the one he
meant to indicate when he recorded the plant as growing at
Halstead. I believe I have somewhere a specimen, gathered at
Grinstead Green and given me by Mr. Bentall, who had a paper-
mill there; and on the farm was a brook, a tributary of the Colne,
the low meadow-land about it resembling in its character
that of the meadows at Bardfield and Wethersfield." Mr.
Varenne is explicit on this point because Bentall, writing in
the 'Phytologist' (vol. ii., p. 515) on April 16th, 1846, records
the plant as "in small quantities in a damp meadow at Hal-
stead." Grinstead Green is two miles from Halstead. From
the 'Flora of Essex' (Appendix III.) it appears that P. elatior
grows in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Suffolk, but not
in Kent. The Rev. W. W. Newbould has kindly informed
me, on the authority of the Rev. — Hillhouse, that it also
grows at Clapham and Marston, in Bedfordshire.
I have, unfortunately, never in England seen P. elatior
growing outside Essex, although it certainly does so. I will
take the five counties abutting on Essex in order commencing
with Suffolk. The authors of the 'Flora of Suffolk' state
(page 53), under the heading P. veris, that the Oxlip (P.
elatior) is "plentiful in moist pastures and hedge-banks at
Hawstead, Hitcham, Finborough, &c." I presume the authors
were fully competent to identify the species, but "pastures
and hedge-banks" are not the situations in which we usually
find it in Essex. A specimen in the British Museum (Natural
History), South Kensington, is labelled "Hitcham, Suffolk,
1844, C. C. Babington."
In Babington's 'Flora of Cambridgeshire' (1860, p. 188)
appears the following :—"Oxlip (P. elatior, Jacq.). P. veris
elatior pallido flore. Ray's Catalogues (1660) 126, and Mar-