Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/92

Synopsis of the number of species in the Natural Orders:—

It is mainly to its heirloom of aboriginal woodland that the rich development of the fruticose Rubi in Herefordshire is due. The commons and open waste lands of the county are both small in amount and poor in bramble forms. On the contrary the woodland is extremely rich both in forms and individuals. This fact, when contrasted with the poverty of the planted ' spinneys ' of Leicestershire and other English counties, affords a strong presumption that the Herefordshire woods are really aboriginal. Moreover these plants are strikingly local ; a single form or group of forms often occupying a woodland area nearly to the exclusion of all the rest. The number of distinct bramble forms recorded in the county to the year 1905 is about 128, arranged in the Rev. W. M. Rogers's 'Handbook' under 85 species and 43 sub-species and varieties (excluding the Babingtonian forms of Rubus caesius, L.). This gives to Herefordshire the position of the leading county in this genus: a position which is at present approached most nearly by Surrey, but may in the future be disputed by Shropshire when the brambles of that county have been more largely worked. Except the dry tops of a few wooded hills the fruticose Rubi occupy the whole area of Herefordshire woods, attaining their maximum of development and fruit-production on and under the northern base of wooded lowland slopes. The contrast between the woodlands and the open cultivated lands of the county is such that without special investigation of the former the bramble flora of the county might be accounted a very poor one. Of the rarer brambles of the county Rubus acutifrons and ochrodermis are spread over nearly the whole of its area and are not mentioned under the characteristic plants of particular districts ; most of the remaining rarer species are noticed under their special districts. 40