Flora of Ashdown Forest - Botanical Society of the British Isles

102Aphanes arvensis sensu stricto. Parsley-piert.Tetrads 33V and 33W (Hall 1980).Only recorded introduced with soil to Pippingford Park (444.303), 1993, SBRS. Locally common in Britain and Sussexon soils ranging from mildly acidic to calcareous.Aphanes inexspectata fA. microcarpa). Slender parsley-piert.Tetrads 43F (Hall 19801.Much more common on Ashdown Forest than A. arvensis s.s. and usually found on acidic soils, especially in dry opensites. Less common in Sussex and Britain than A. arvensis S.S., and predominantly western in Europe. Also found in NorthAfrica and North America.Aphanes agg. A. arvensis A. inexspectataRosa. Roses.This account is based on the B5BI Roses handbook (Graham & Primavesi 1993) which has replaced the standard 1930-1931 work by Wolley-Dod, and brought some consistency to an otherwise thorny problem. Wolley-Dod gave a name toeach hybrid or form, resulting in a complex plethora of taxa as shown in his Flora of Sussex; this approach has now beendropped in favour of more broadly defined species which may show some introgressed characters from other species. Ifanyone wants to spend their life in roses there is still much work to be done on the genetics and variation.Roses are quite variable within the species, and adjacent bushes can sometimes appear quite different. Plants arebest identified with both hips and foliage (beware of cut bushes whose foliage is often untypical). Most plants of speciesother than R. arvensis and R. canina have been seen by TR and a few of the more difficult specimens have been confirmedby Toni Primavesi. Graham & Primavesi (1993) also note that some hybrids are quite frequent, but we have recorded veryfew, probably because we have had enough problems getting to know the parents, let alone their wayward offspring.Most of the roses on Ashdown Forest are the glabrous species, R. can;na and R. arvens;s. The trick for finding therarer ones is to look for bushes with lots of glands or hairs on the leaflets, but as these tend to occur singly or in pairsscattered around the Forest verges and woodland edges, many R. can;na plants will have to be examined before they canbe picked out. The rarer species are likely to have been under-recorded to some extent as new ones have been foundwhilst driving round hedge-crawling.*Rosa multiflora. Many-flowered rose.One large bush opposite house near 5t John's (50.31), probably planted, PW, 1995.native in eastern Asia.It isRosa arvensis. Field-rose.Common on the Forest (Hall 1980).Frequent in hedges and in woodland around the edges of Ashdown Forest as clearlyshown on the distribution map, and especially frequent on clays. Whilst often associated withancient woodlands, this rose is a good colonist and also occurs on scrubby edges on theForest, sometimes in large patches where the cream-coloured, upturned flowers contrastbeautifully with the weak trailing purple-green stems. One bush on Ridge Road climbingthrough the trees was over 5 metres tall.It is easily distinguished from the other species by the exerted, united styles arising froma flat disk. It is common in Sussex and lowland England, though rare in the north andScotland, and frequent in south, central and western Europe, reaching its northern limit in the British Isles.