the Forth Naturalist Historian - Forth Naturalist and Historian ...

Forth Naturalist and Historian, volume 22 67
BRAMBLES OF THE TROSSACHS AND STIRLING:
W. M. ROGERS’ 1896 SCOTTISH VISIT RETRACED
G. H. Ballantyne
Most people with more than just a passing interest in wild flowers are
probably aware that there are some groups of plants which are ‘difficult’ and
which need to be left to specialists. The main groups include the hawkweeds
(Hieracia), dandelions (Taraxaca) and brambles (Rubi). Most of these reproduce
asexually and, e.g. what Linnaeus classified as a single species, Rubus fruticosus,
is now known to consist of several hundreds of true-breeding entities, each the
product of a fertile cross in the past. In the case of brambles, well over 300
microspecies have been reliably recorded from Britain and Ireland and several
additions are being described yearly. However, it is now evident that many
brambles have a very localised distribution – some a mere bush or two – and it
has become the custom to bestow a scientific binomial only if a particular
microspecies is known to be present over a reasonably large area. Therefore
there are quite a few bushes and clumps to be found that cannot be named,
and may never receive one.
Differences between some species are small and not obvious whereas others
look quite dissimilar. In the field environmental factors, especially shade, can
exacerbate difficulties in identification so that the same taxon growing at the
edge of a wood can look quite distinct in the wood itself. Thus it is not
surprising that the early botanists were baffled by brambles and in fact it was
not until about 1970 that any real progress was made. By then, Eric Edees had
been joined by Alan Newton in paying the Rubus genus much attention, and
their resultant Brambles of the British Isles (Edees and Newton 1988) at last made
it worth while for interested individuals to record brambles meaningfully.
In Scotland not much work was done on the genus during the 19th century.
Towards its close, the foremost British authority was the Reverend W. Moyle
Rogers of Bournemouth, who received parcels of dried specimens from north
of the Border and thus gained a knowledge of some species. In 1896 he took the
opportunity of a first visit to Scotland to stay in Callander for the first three
weeks of July and to explore the surrounding countryside increasingly being
called the Trossachs, in search of brambles. He chose well for, unknown to him,
Callander lies near the dividing line between what were much later described
as the North Sea and Irish Sea Bramble Florulas (Newton 1980), thus giving
him the chance to find a good range of species. Had he gone to any number of
other places as his base, he might have been quite disappointed, for there are
many parts of the country bereft of other than a handful of species. He also
made short outings to a few other localities, notably Killin and Crieff while he
stayed at Gargunnock at the invitation of Colonel Stirling, a local botanist, for
three days at the end of his visit and explored the Stirling area. The results of
this Scottish trip are described in Rogers (1897a and 1897b).