The woodland flora of the Forest of Writtle and surrounding area
secondary role to play as repositories of arable weeds. Bushy Wood is a case in point. Following
recent coppicing work the woodland floor was knee deep in such weeds for several years, putting
the surrounding cornfields to shame! This abundance may reflect the site's former use as farmland
and the fertile nature of the soil compared with ancient woodland. If genetic modification technology
is adopted in this country and proves to be efficient as its proponents claim, then it is not beyond
the bounds of possibility that such copses become worth preserving not for their woodland but
their farmland flora! The delicious irony of such a thought!
The Flora
The systematic list that follows covers the period 1988-2002 and is based on regular visits to all the
woodland areas within the survey area, although my particular interest was the main Forest springs
and the outlying woods in Ingatestone, Fryerning and Margaretting parishes. It also includes records
made by Stephen and Geoffrey Wilkinson, Martin Heywood, Ailsa Wildig and Tony Boniface who,
like me, were involved in BSBI Atlas survey work in the area during the late 1990s.
Historically, there appears to have been very little botanical recording work carried out in the area.
Although there arc a good number of records from both Writtle and Roxwell in Gibson's Flora of
Essex (1862) very few refer to woodland species and it would appear that the Writtle Park estate
was out of bounds to botanists. The majority of the Writtle records were made by Alfred Greenwood
and those from Roxwell by Thomas Corder and although specific localities are not listed in Gibson
there is a close parallel between the woodland plants reported from the former and those found in
Southwood and its environs at the present time. There are rather more records in Stan Jermyn's
1974 Essex Flora - many made by the man himself during his cycle rides around the County - but
the majority of these corne from areas with public access such as Mill Green Common and
Stoneymore Wood. Sandwiched between these two august botanists is a humbler individual, namely,
Robert West, the headmaster of Ingatestone Boys' School at the close of the nineteenth century. He
encouraged his pupils to collect wild flowers from the surrounding countryside and these were duly
pressed and exhibited on the walls of the classroom. He furnished Mrs Wilde of Furze Hall, Fryerning
with a list of plants found in the area and she included a note on some of the rarer species in the
chapter devoted to natural history in her book Ingatestone and Fryerning and the Essex Great
Road (1913). I would dearly liked to have seen the full list but it is not among her papers in the
Essex Records Office and neither her nor Robert West could possibly have imagined the enormous
changes that were to be wrought on the Essex landscape during the latter half of the twentieth
century and which would have made even that humble list a valuable historical document.
The following list of plants refers only to species that are more or less specific to woodland or - in
the case of trees and shrubs - are an important component of the flora. Many others - including
arabic weeds - arc found in wooded areas from time to time but to list them all would make this
article impossibly long and the systematic list a tedious read. It should also be noted that 'The
Mores' refers to that part of Mill Green Common which separates Stoneymore and Deerslade
Woods and is distinct from The Moors, Cooksmill Green. Nomenclature follows that in Stace
(1997).
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Essex Naturalist (New Series) 20 (2003)