A Contribution to the Flora of Derbyshire; being an Account of the Flowering Plants, Ferns, and Characeæ found in the County

Abstract

DERBYSHIRE is much the most interesting of our midland counties from a botanical and physico-geographical point of view. Geographical botanists, following Watson, divide the surface of Britain into two regions of climate—a lower or agrarian region, in which the cultivation of cereals and the potato is practicable, so far as climate is concerned; and an upper or Arctic region, in which no cultivation is possible. The agrarian region is divided into three zones, and whilst in Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire, and Kent, only one of these three zones is represented, in Derbyshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire, we get all three of them, and a greater area of superagrarian zone in Derbyshire than in any other midland county. The plants of Britain, botanical geographers divide into two principal groups—the southern types, which have their head-quarters in Central Europe, and the boreal types, which have their head-quarters in Northern Europe, and grow only upon high mountains further south. The southern types are to the northern as six to one—about 1200 species against 200; but less than 50 species reach the midland counties. In Derbyshire we get a declination of surface from mountains nearly 2000 feet high down to a low level, so that it shows better than any other county how, in the centre of England, the boreal and austral elements of the flora meet and mingle together.

A Contribution to the Flora of Derbyshire; being an Account of the Flowering Plants, Ferns, and Characeæ found in the County.

By the Rev.W. H. Painter. 8vo, pp. 556, with a Map. (London: George Bell and Sons, 1889.)