Page:Journal of botany, British and foreign, Volume 9 (1871).djvu/381

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��ON THE BOTANY OF THE LIZARD PENINSULA.

By J. G. Bakek, F.L.S.

Cornwall is one of those counties of Britain the distribution of plants within which is most imperfectly registered. As an extreme term for the island both in climate and <reograpliical position it possesses a special interest, and ils geological character is in addition so pecidiar, that it would be very interesting to have its flora worked out in full detail. It is likely that thei'e is not much left to be done in discovering rarities within its area, but a botanist, like myself — coming there from the eastern or central parts of the island, and knowing its flora so far as pub- lished records reach, the species that grow within the county as a whole, with a notion of comparative abundance and dispersion of the special rarities — finds much to interest him in seeing how abundant some of the specially western species are, and how many plants which he takes for granted are likely to be common, are found to be rare, or even altogether al)seut, from wide tracts. It is as a contribution towards a Cornish flora of this kind that these notes are put on record. The Lizard peninsula is not only the most southern, but botanieally the most characteristic and interesting part of the county. The following list was made dnring a visit paid in August of the present year by Mr. A. W. Bennett and myself under the guidance of Mr. T. R. A. Briggs, whose previous knowledge of the district, and intimate practical acquaintance with west-country species in a living state, enabled us to make the cata- logue much more complete than it wouhl otherwise have been. The line of north limit within which we restricted ourselves was the high road that passes from Falmouth to Helston through Penryn, This encloses an area of something like a hundred square miles, and in- cludes, in addition to the Serpentine region that fills up all the southern part of the Lizard promontory, both a tract on the north of it, underlaid by sedimentary Devonian strata, and a slice out of the tract of low undu- lated granite hills that fills up portions of the central ridge of the county, and the whole of the extreme west between Penzance, St. Ives, and the Laud's End. The Serpentine extends from the west shore of the Lizard promontory at Mullion, past the north side of Goonhilly Downs, to the opposite shore at Manaccan, filling up an area of forty square miles. The centre of this is a bare uncultivated heathery plateau, rising to not more than tin-ee or four hundred feet above sea-level, almost entirely destitute even of planted trees, but a bare unbroken waste, extending in one ])art nearly from shore to shore, with abundance of Furze, both vernal ami autumnal, intermixed with four kinds of Heath, the three that grow every- wh(!re, and v(i(jrins more abundant than any of them, no ciliaris here at all, allliongh it is plentiful a little beyond our bounds about Truro, broad open grass-bordered roads edged with Aijroslia vulgaris, Fcdnca ovina, Alra caryophi/llen, and Triodia, with PUtntago marUinia and Coronopus, Saffhia nodosa and Anllmnis nohUls mixed abundantly amongst them, and peaty pools in which the streamlets that run down the shore take their rise, yielding plenty of Sc/.rpi/s flailaiis, Jnncnn .i//jj/i//i\, Jftdosciadiiim VOL. IX. [dkcemueu 1, 1871.] - A

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