: an occasional column for the socially distanced botanist
The importance of social interaction amongst botanists was made abundantly clear by the Botanical Society and Exchange Club of the British Isles (as BSBI was then known) when in the times of George Claridge Druce the description of its Objects and invitation to membership began with a statement to the effect that ‘The Society offers the advantage of meetings, correspondence and the exchange of opinions between botanists’.
In times such as these, when we may not be able to look forward to field meetings for a while and isolation and social distancing has been brought upon us the new social media offer a way to keep in touch, and where we cannot look forward we must perforce look back.
Thus Druce wrote in the preface of his Comital Flora of the British Isles (January 1932) how ‘a new record was…a real joy’ and reflected on ‘the pleasure of field-work …and of the many friends’. James Walter White in the second sentence of the Preface of his Flora of Bristol (March 1912) put it: ‘my love of botanical pursuits has brought me health, friends and recreation, with a host of delightful experiences’. This column is designed as a forum to share some of those happy times.
1 Rev. E.S. Marshall and Mrs. Marshall
2 Jumping for Joy
3 The Excitement of Research
4 The story in the picture: Arthur G Tansley, H Stuart Thompson and the Sharpham Moor Plot
5 Notices of the Rare and most Remarkable Plants in the Neighbourhoods of Dunster, Blue Anchor, Minehead &c. by Miss Isabella Gifford
6 Miss Gifford’s whitebeam, Miss Atwood’s whitebeam, and a new first record of Sorbus subcuneata, Somerset Whitebeam
Unfortunately Clive was unable to complete his seventh column which would have involved the unwrapping of an Egyptian mummy, a journey to the colonies, an association with a vole, being granted a coat of arms, and, most importantly for us, another long-forgotten list of Somerset plants.