Flora of Ashdown Forest - Botanical Society of the British Isles

Fincham (1995) published a small photographic guide to 107 'more common' flowers of Ashdown Forest, whichshould be useful for beginners. The main identification errors are Calamintha ascendens and Carum carvi, and anumber of the photographs are incorrectly labelled.2, Unpublished sourcesW. E. P. Done recorded the flora of the area around Groombridge between 1904 and 1914 in a personal diary, now inthe possession of the Sussex Botanical Recording Society. Done recorded extensively on the east side of Forest,especially around Crow borough and some of his records from that area may refer to areas outside our study area.Between 1928 and 1953, George Dent noted many observations of plants and animals on Ashdown Forest in hispersonal diary, including details of Genista pilosa and Hammarbya pa/udosa. The information has been summarised bycourtesy of Mrs Phyllis Green who inherited the diary when George died in 1959.A few records from one of Ron Boniface's notebooks have been included from his visit on 14 August 1948 toHindleap Warren, Broadstone Warren and the golf course where he gives frequencies for plants which differ markedlyfrom the current situation.Data for selected 'rare' species were compiled for the Forest by Colin Corfield in 1981/82; these records havebeen abstracted by Chris Marrable.Peter Sollars carried out a detailed survey of the parish of Forest Row mainly between 1985 and 1987. He hasabstracted details of the more interesting species from his notebooks.Data held by the Biological Records Centre (BRCI, Monks Wood for TO/4.3 was summarised for the BSBIMonitoring Scheme (Rich & Woodruff 1990), and selected records have been abstracted from the 'historical' pre-1987records. 1987 and 1988 records collected by the SBRS, DB, and PW & RW have also been abstracted where theycould be located to a l-km square and recording information was available. Additional historical records wereabstracted for TQ/4.2 manually but fewer details were available.3. HerbariaRecords have been extracted from the comp~ter database at the Booth Museum of Natural History, Brighton (BlN) byGerald Legg and Joan Stoddart; where possible, these have been correlated against the literature records. The maincollections are of T. Hilton (especially the period 1893-19011 and E. H. Farr (1892-19051.There are a few collections in Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery (llS), and data have been extracted fromthe card index by MM. There are three main collections from the Forest by J. Stirling, L. M. Child and G. E. Shaw (thelatter possibly on joint excursions).The herbarium of Miss Phyllis Stockdale (1898-19491 of East Grinstead ((ater Mrs Horrill of Eastbournel is held atBexhill Museum (BEX), and the records have been extracted by RN. The records date mainly 1910-1914, with a few1916 records, and most are simply labelled East Grinstead, though a few for Ashdown Forest and Forest Row are alsonoted. She collected many plants from F. J. Hanbury's garden at Brockhufst, and presumably learnt from both him andher father, William Stockdale. Wolley-Dod had also been through and confirmed or corrected the material. Acomparison of the notes and records in Wolley-Dod (1937) with the herbarium material indicates that Wolley-Dod musthave talked directly to Mrs Horrill and gleaned further information; for instance, the Drosera intermedia (D. longifolia)specimen in BEX is simply labelled East Grinstead whilst the record in Wooliey-Dod (1937) reads 'bog near the riflerange, Forest Row'. Individual localities must therefore be treated with caution, but we have attempted to correlatethem as far as possible (Rich, Nicholson & Wood 1996).A few records of selected species have been extracted from material in the cupboards at the Natural HistoryMuseum (BM), but the remaining 40% of the material in boxes has not been searched, and further work on the Barton& Riddelsdell Rubus herbarium is required.A few records have also been abstracted from the Fielding-Druce herbarium at Oxford (OXF).4. Field surveyThe main field survey was carried out from 1993 and 1995. Botanists were asked to record the vascular plants in allthe l-km squares covering the Forest area, irrespective of the actual Ashdown Forest boundary. They were asked tovisit as many different squares as possible rather than concentrate on one area. Field meetings were organised withthe Flora group once or twice each month during the summer to help with plant identification (five in 1993, ten in1994 and thirteen in 1995). There was no need to direct recorders at this stage to different areas as they largelytended to select different routes IRich & Smith 19961.The record cards used were the SBRS ones which are designed to collect recording information (Appendix 1), andin particular the time spent recording was requested. A check was kept on which habitats had been recorded, and unrecordedones were visited later. Several spring surveys were carried in 1994 and 1995 to look for early-floweringspecies. Experts were called in to help with the large critical genera, Taraxacum and Rubus, as they simply could notbe recorded with local expertise.A check was kept on time spent recording during the first two years, and then a realistic target - to bring the totaltime in each l-km square up to ten hours - was set in 1995. To try to ensure even coverage, botanists were allocatedgroups of 8-10 squares in 1995 and asked to co-ordinate the recording. Recorders were also supplied with lists of'common' species which were missing from the squares. This drew attention to plants like Betula or U/ex which hadnot been noted. Lists of missing species which had been recorded in the tetrads by Hall (1980) were also circulatedwhich helped to refind some plants, Special searches were made for some species such as Genista pilosa.An incomplete list of the historical records was circulated in February 1994. Draft maps of the 1993/1994 datawere circulated in March 1995, which also helped to draw attention to the under-recorded areas and erroneousrecords.Record cards were sent to TR after each trip or during the winter, and compiled onto master-cards. TR and otherschecked identification of problem plants, some of which have been deposited in' herb. P. A. Harmes. All the field11