Flora of Ashdown Forest - Botanical Society of the British Isles

89insipid in flavour IHaskel1 1960),In Sussex it is rarer on the heavy clay soils.widespread in Europe and Asia,Widespread and increasing in England (Rich & Woodruff 1996), and*Rubus spectabilis. Salmonberry.Three separate clumps on grassy area west of Stonemead (429.289), 1994, PH et al.This species is potentially invasive. First introduced to Britain in 1827, grown in gardensand planted as pheasant food, it is now locally naturalized. Most of the spread currentlyappears to be vegetative, and fruit production is low compared to its native sites in NorthAmerica. It appears to be more at home in northern Scotland.Rubus fruticosus. Bramble, Blackberry.Brambles tend to be abundant on acidic soils in well-lit places, and we have recorded them inevery square on the Forest.Many brambles produce berries asexually, creating many local forms differing in manysmall characters such as leaf shape, hairiness, prickles, etc.; there are over 400 of these'microspecies' in Britain. The heaths and commons of south-east England are very rich inspecies, and Ashdown Forest is the centre of a regional endemic complex. Nineteen of thespecies recorded are endemic to Britain, and many more to Europe.This account follows Brambles of the British Isles (Edees & Newton 1988). Fourbatologists (from batos = berry) have identified our microspecies. In 1994, Dave Earl taughtTR a few basic species, while Alan Newton and Alec Bull independently recorded five 1-km squares on the north side ofthe Forest and two on the south side. In 1995, Rob Randall joined us for a day recording on the south side of the Forest.Other records for TQ/4.2 and TQ/4.3 have been taken from the maps in Edees & Newton (1988) (most of the records inHall 1980 were based on the same information), and from the report of a Rubus meeting at Newbridge in 1969 (Philp1970), updated with help from Alan Newton. There are some unnamed species present and a considerable amount ofwork remains to be done.Blackberries have been collected locally for many years le,g, 25 kg by one family alone in 1985; AFN 8:20), Arthur(1989) records that a Sussex folk remedy for boils was to crawl under a bramble which had grown into the soil at bothends. Anyone trying it may need another of his remedies for extracting thorns from fingers; draw the thorn out using oneof the bramble leaves moistened with a blackberry as a plaster for an hour or two. 'Brambletye' is a local name at ForestRow, originally 'Branbertie' in the Doomsday Book.Not surprisingly, the records we have are strongly related to where the expert batologists have recorded.Number of microspecies(small dots few species, large dots many species)RecordersIsymbols are X ~ AN & AB, + ~ DE, 0 ~ RR)4 5The non-specialist can skip most of the next few pages unless they want to know which blackberries they are likely to beeating, but have a look at Rubus newbridgensis, Ashdown Forest's very own bramble.Section Rubus. Subsection Rubus (R. suberectus).The records for R. suberectus from Ashdown (Cooper 1835) and Ashdown Forest, W. Borrer (Arnold 1887) are referred tothis Subsection but not to a microspecies.Rubus arrheniiformis.Wych Cross, 1951, W, Watson leGE - the TQ/4,3 record in Hall 1980; Edees & Newton 1988),Widespread but very localised in England and Wales on heaths and heathy woods. Long thought to be a Britishendemic, AN has recently confirmed it from Holland and Belgium.