Leo Grindon
Bracken
A Memoir
by Daniel Quall King
2019
This is Bracken, a Patterdale Terrier bitch,
(photographed at her hairdresser’s) who
lives with her dog, Buddy, at Abbey Farm in deepest
Norfolk. They are part of the menagerie
belonging to Richard Bales and Isabel King.
But that’s not what this is all about.
Bracken provided the word-association-football*
kickoff for this memoir, that’s all.
* A Monty Python expression
I lived in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, from 2004 to 2010. Having been retired for some years and being fancy-free and in a place where I could pursue an old interest, geology, at university level, I proceeded to take all the geology courses then available to older folk, and even managed an OU credit.
After a couple of years of improving my knowledge of geology but having run out of adult courses, I thought I’d see if the Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester needed any volunteers in that department. They didn’t; but “Do you know anything about botany? They could do with some help.” “Well, no, but I could learn.” In this way I was set to spend some fascinating years with the people who were then the staff and volunteers in the Manchester Museum Herbarium.
I was fortunate to live on a good bus route, so once or twice a week I headed off to the university and gradually got to know my way around the herbarium.
The museum, having grown like Topsy, is a bit of a warren; the herbarium is located in the tower and attic of Manchester Museum near the entrance to the original quadrangle.
Cast of Characters (Then)
Leander Wolstenholme, Curator of Botany here giving a tour of the herbarium. A member of probably the last generation of research-centred curators, Leander was one of those people with an extraordinary memory for all things botanical. For some years he was an editor of the Journal of the Botanical Society of the British Isles. A person of great kindness and humour.
Lindsey Loughtman, the ever-helpful Curatorial Assistant (part-time).
Suzanne Grieve, Curatorial Assistant (part-time).
Matt Lowe, Curatorial Assistant (later at the Zoological Museum, University of Cambridge).
Priscilla Tolfree, retired university librarian and lifelong plant enthusiast.
Audrey Locksley, Patricia’s botany pal and another very knowledgeable amateur.
Barbara Porter, who collected rare ferns and had a garden full of them which she bequeathed to the University. We transplanted them to the university’s Botanical Experimental Ground in Fallowfield.
Dave Bishop (Retired industrial chemist, Mersey Valley botany expert).
David Earl, County Recorder for both the Lancashire vice counties (S, 59 & W, 60); another botanist with a remarkable memory. Fondly referred to by Patricia as ‘the fount of all knowledge’.
Daniel King, rank amateur, but very curious.
The story of the founding of the MMHerb is interesting enough, and a potted version of it is included at the end of this memoir. Once Matt Lowe trained me up to take photos and put them online at http://harbour.man.ac.uk/mmcustom/BotQuery.php , most of the material I was put to work on was in the Grindon Herbarium, a unique collection of specimens, illustrations and printed material.
However, that’s just to get the ball rolling. Or the seed germinating (sorry).
One morning I de-bussed as usual at Oxford Road and made my way to the quad and up to the herbarium for a morning of photography and putting-on-line. But when it came time for cuppas, up on the raised bit of platform that accommodated a couple of office desks and enough seats for a tea-break, sitting in a group approximating the demeanour of a court martial were Suzanne, Leander and Lindsey. I negotiated the steps and made for the kettle, but before I could do anything with it, an ominous “Dannn … ” with interesting inflections emerged from Lindsey. No-one cracked a smile. So I smiled and said “Hi!”, thinking, ‘This is serious’. And I hadn’t even dropped the camera. “We’ve got a proposal for you. You know the illustrations in the Grindon Herbarium? We thought you might be interested in identifying the publications they were taken from.” Nonplussed, I was, thinking the trio had misidentified me as the Yoda of the graphic world. The Grindon Herbarium isn’t small, and over the many years Leopold Hartley Grindon had assembled the material, there must have accumulated many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of loose illustrations and articles taken from damaged or incomplete botanical books. What a job that’d be! All I could do was look at Leander and ask, “How long do you think it would take?” He looked away thoughtfully for a few seconds, and then, back in eye contact, he said “Maybe three or four years”.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, the main result of a couple of years of research was two articles, with checklists, about the Grindon Herbarium and the sources of the illustrative and other material it contains. There are materials from 24 of the popular botanical periodicals of the day; and from books and serial publications, 78 (published 2007) in Archives of Natural History and another 17 (2009) for a total of 95. Of course, never having submitted an article for publication in a scholarly periodical, I relied a great deal on advice from Leander about the commentary in the articles.
We were all very pleased when the articles were accepted. They are in ANH Vol. 34 (1): 129-139, April 2007, and Vol. 36 (2): October 2009. The latter is in the Short Notes section, p.354 ff. Archives of Natural History is published by The Society for the History of Natural History (yes, really), which has offices in the Natural History Museum in London. This may be one of the least-known scholarly publications in the world, but has fascinating articles about such things as the great voyages of discovery and so forth. For the enthusiast, the Manchester Museum Collections Database contains within a larger number, the original 700 or so images from the Grindon. If you type botanical prints and drawings into the Botany search window, it brings up most of them.
So what happened to the bracken? When Bracken the pup got her name, it eventually reminded me of an item in Grindon – a pair of exquisite pen-and-ink drawings on tracing paper, as well as a set of printer’s proofs, of Pteridium aquilinum, or bracken to you and me. According to my information, the spores of ordinary bracken are so light that they’ve spread to all corners of the botanical globe, including the often very isolated islands of the South Atlantic. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pteridium_aquilinum .
Although the original photo files of the illustrations are large and adequate to do justice to the extremely fine work in them, the software that uploads them into the KE Emu database condenses the information to such an extent that the delicacy and detail in the original are lost.
Here’s what the online photo of the original looks like:
But what a good excuse to visit the herbarium and see the originals! The illustrations were made for the translation of Julien Marie Crozet’s 1771-1772 account of his voyage of discovery to the South Atlantic, published in 1891. Here’s the relevant section:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1306431h.html yields: H. Ling Roth, transl., Crozet’s Voyage to Tasmania, New Zealand the Ladrone Islands, and the Philippines in the Years 1771-1772. London: Truslove & Shirley, 143, Oxford Street, W.; 1891. p35ff:
The Food of the Inhabitants of the North of New Zealand.
We were extremely well received by the savages. They came in mobs on to the vessels and appeared there every day, and we went similarly to their villages and into their houses with the greatest security. This naturally gave us every facility for seeing how these people fed themselves, what were their occupations, their works, their industry, and even their amusements.
We have already noticed that the basis of the food of these people is the root of a fern absolutely similar to ours, with the sole difference that in some places the New Zealand fern has a much bigger and longer root and its fronds grow to greater length.[1]
[1 The New Zealand fern is Pteris aquiline, var. esculenta, and the European species is Pteris aquiline. The difference is thus very slight. See Figs. 17 and 18.]
Having pulled up the root they dry it for several days in the air and sun. When they wish to eat it they hold it before the fire, roast it lightly, pound it between two stones, and when in this state they chew it in order to obtain the juices, which to me appeared farinaceous; when they have nothing else to eat, they eat even the woody fibre; but when they have fish or shellfish or some other dish, they only chew the root and reject the fibre.
These people live also principally on fish and on shellfish; they eat quail, ducks and other aquatic birds which abound in their country, also various species of birds, dogs, rats, and finally they eat their enemies.
The New Zealanders have no vessel in which to cook their meat; the general custom in all the villages we visited was to cook the meat and fish in a sort of subterranean oven. In every kitchen there is a hole one and a half feet deep and two feet in diameter; on the bottom of the hole they place stones, on the stones they place wood which they light, on this wood they place a layer of flat stones which they make red hot, and on these latter stones they place the meat or fish which they desire to cook.
They also live on potatoes and gourds, which they cook in the same way as their meat. Their habits in eating are dirty.
I have also seen them eat a sort of green gum which they like immensely, but I was not able to find out the tree from which they obtained it. Some of us ate of this by letting it drop in our mouths. We all found it very heating.
We also remarked that the savages eat regularly twice a day, once in the morning, the other time at sunset. As they are all strong, hardy, big, well-formed, and with good constitution, one concludes that their food is very healthy, and I think it well to repeat here that fern root forms the basis of their food.
Generally speaking they appeared to me to be great eaters; when they came on board our vessel, we could not satisfy them sufficiently with the biscuit which they liked immensely. When the sailors were eating they would approach them in order to get a portion of their soup and of their salt meat. The sailors used to give them the remains on their platters, which the savages took care to clean out thoroughly; they were very fond of fat and even of tallow. I have even seen them take the tallow from the sounding lead or tallow otherwise used in the ship and eat it as a tasty morsel. They were very partial to sugar; they drank tea and coffee with us, and liked our drinks according as they were more or less sweetened. They showed great repugnance for wine, and especially for strong liquors; they do not like salt and do not eat it. They drink a great deal of water, and when I saw them very thirsty, I used to think that this desire to be continually drinking was caused by their dry food, the fern root.
The Manchester Museum Herbarium
The MANCH [coded for reference] herbarium is held within The Manchester Museum, part of The University of Manchester. It contains approximately 1 million specimens covering a world-wide distribution. It was founded in 1860 by the coalition of several major individual or corporate collections. In particular, the two nineteenth-century Manchester businessmen and amateur naturalists, Charles Bailey and Cosmo Melvill, inspired by the original and substantial collections of the Manchester Natural History Society, collaborated to collect and buy plant material from around the world, and arranged for their final deposition at the Museum. Bailey and Melvill alone provided a wide range of plant collections unequalled by any but a few major national museums. Also, at that time the museum acquired the very special collection of plants, many cultivated, together with illustrations and text, that were assembled by Leo Grindon in connection with his pioneering work in Adult Education.
In addition to this foundation material, the Museum’s Herbarium incorporates collections from thousands of other people, ranging from small personal herbariums donated or bequeathed, to material collected today by expeditions to tropical rain forests and other endangered habitats. There are also many items of historical importance and interest, such as specimens collected by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle, specimens collected by Admiral Franklin’s expeditions in search of the N.W. Passage, and collections of the great Swedish naturalist Linnaeus. In particular, the 16,500 Richard Spruce items (mostly Amazon and Andes hepatics) have a value far in excess of their number.
DQK Note: At the time when I worked there, the herbarium collection was reckoned to be the fourth largest in the British Isles. Some of the others are at London (Kew and the Natural History Museum), Glasnevin, Edinburgh and Cambridge. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbaria_in_Europe#British_Isles .
Coffee or tea, madam?
It’s rather strange to think about it, but I suppose I have been living through something of a revolution in hot drinks in the UK. Traditionally, we are considered to be a nation of tea drinkers, but now on my way to work, I suspect that the majority of travel mugs clutched by my fellow commuters contain a more stimulating coffee instead. In 2008, the UK started to import more tonnes of coffee (green and roasted) than tea. Of course, you get more cups out of a kilo of tea than you do out of a kilo of coffee, but the upward trend for coffee importation continues (FAOSTAT).
It used to be that the nearest my coffee drinking came to any kind of ceremony was if I happened to be the lucky person who got to pop the seal on a new jar of instant. Now, however, even if there isn’t a gadget in the kitchen, then there’s ususally a coffee shop nearby to provide you with your morning ritual and your perfect brew. In 17th and 18th century London and Oxford, coffeehouses were also the place for men to go and read the news, make financial deals, reason about academic subjects and perhaps even discuss something a little seditious. By the end of the 18th century, these coffeehouses had all but disappeared. Many factors have been suggested for their decline, including that printed news was easier to come by, and the development of gentleman’s clubs. Tea drinking was on on the rise as it became fashionable at court, as women could participate in a way that they couldn’t in coffeehouses, and of course, through the promotional of the British East India Company’s trading interests in tea from China and particularly from India. Names such as Assam, Darjeeling, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Kangra and Niligri became familiar in the UK through the tea gardens established there by the British in the 19th century.
Easier to prepare, tea remained the hot drink of choice in the UK for about two centuries providing warmth, comfort and calories (with milk and sugar) with every cup. Many countries favour either tea or coffee at the expense of the other, and in the UK a 2012 YouGov poll still showed more people still rate a cuppa as their favourite hot drink (52% tea/ 35% coffee). The coffee shop sector is one of the strongest businesses in the UK economy, turning over £9.6 billion in 2017. So when you next get to the counter of a coffee shop, what will it be – coffee or tea?
Further reading
https://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world-of-the-london-coffeehouse/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_coffeehouses_in_the_17th_and_18th_centuries
David Grigg (2002). The Worlds of Tea and Coffee: Patterns of consumption. GeoJournal 57; 283-294
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea_in_India
https://www.teacoffeespiceofindia.com/tea/tea-origin
Plant obsessions at Biddulph Grange
Last week, Daniel Atherton and Leslie Hurst from the National Trust gave us an wonderful tour of the gardens of Biddulph Grange (see Campbell’s post on the Egyptian garden here). Unfortunately, little information is available about the gardens as they were being created by the horticulturally-enthusiastic owners James and Maria Bateman (between 1840 and 1861). With the Head Gardener’s logbooks missing, the restoration of the garden has relied on other sources such as letters between Bateman, botanists and plant hunters, books logging out-going plants from specialist nurseries and descriptions from garden visitors.
The Leo Grindon Cultivated plants collection is full of specimens from notable gardens as well as a host of newspaper cuttings, magazine prints, notes and letters. With such a wealth of information, progress has been slow in documenting this collection, and so it remains an exciting treasure-trove of little-explored gems. I wondered whether there would be any references to Bateman or Biddulph Grange in the collection ….but where to start?
James Bateman is famous for his beautifully illustrated volumes on orchids, and sure enough, it wasn’t long before I uncovered some articles which Leo Grindon thought interesting enough to add into his ‘general Orchid’ selection.
This article from the Gardener’s Chronicle (Saturday, November 25th, 1871) is a biography of Bateman and his importance in the 19th century horticultural world. This quote caught my eye:
“Some of the effects, from a landscape gardener’s point of view, were strikingly beautiful, many quaint and grotesque. Had these latter been carried out by a person of less natural taste than Mr Bateman, they would have degenerated into the cockney style. In Mr Bateman’s case there was the less risk of this as, in addition to his own good taste and feeling for the appropriate, he was aided by Mr. E. W. Cooke, the eminent painter, and we may write, plant lover.”
….but I’m still not certain how complimentary this is! Another clipping touches on Bateman’s position in the debate between emerging scientific ideas and the Christian view of the creation of the earth. The geology gallery at Biddulph is a remarkable melding of Bateman’s religion with 19th century scientific discovery in stones and fossils (follow PalaeoManchester for more on this story).
Then there are a few cuttings covering James Bateman’s lectures giving summaries of the information he shared. These cuttings are typical of Leo Grindon’s collection as he rarely recorded the source of his material, or the date of publication. Presumably he was so familiar with the style of the various magazines and papers which he subscribed to that he never saw the need to write these details down.
These cuttings show that Leo Grindon was definitely following the work of James Bateman, but what of the gardens of Biddulph? For the next installment I think we shall have to move into another famous section of the garden, the Himalayan Glen, and delve into the herbarium’s Rhododendron folders to look for more clues.
To be continued……
Manchester Herbarium’s grand re-opening!
After a year of full closure while the Museum roof was rebuilt and about a further 5 years of disruption since the window replacement work began, we finally have the herbarium back up and running. So we thought it was high time to host a party to remind the rest of the Museum and the University’s plant scientists just how lovely our store room is.
We laid out examples of our current projects, some of our favourite objects and quirky things that we’ve come across while we’ve been sorting the place out. After everyone had explored the collection we all headed off to the staff room for some delicious botanically-themed cakes.
We should do this more often!
Recommended by frogs and finance: Schefflera arboricola
This week I was called over to the offices of the finance team to take a look at their dwarf umbrella plant (Schefflera arboricola). It’s clearly received plenty of TLC and is thriving. However, in striving to reach the light it became too tall and very top-heavy. A bit worrying if you’re the one sitting below it! So it was time for some pruning and I’ll be taking the bits home to see if I can get some cuttings growing.
The finance team aren’t the only fans of this plant in the Manchester Museum. This beautiful little frog is a Lemur Leaf Frog; a critically endangered species which is part of the breeding programme in the newly refurbished vivarium.
The dwarf umbrella plant (S. arboricola) is a member of the Araliaceae (ivy) family and is a popular houseplant (especially in variagated forms). This specimen from our cultivated plant collection was collected in China by the plant hunter Augustine Henry (1857–1930). It is undated and was originally identified as a related plant, Heptapleurum octophyllum, but the identification has since been re-determined, as shown by the extra labels. The herbarium sheet is in our cultivated plant collection as the dwarf umbrella plant is native to Taiwan and Hainan, not the mainland Chinese province of Yunnan where this was collected.
Historic Manchester
The Manchester Histories Festival is well underway, so I think it’s time for some historically-minded posts. Leo Grindon’s Manchester Flora was published in 1859 by William White of Bloomsbury and it is ‘A descriptive list of the plants growing wild within eighteen miles of Manchester with notices of the plants commonly cultivated in gardens’. The book encourages us to ‘consider the lilies of the field’.
Along with an introduction to botany, keys to the families of plants and descriptions of species, Grindon also tells us where to go and look for these plants. So, in 1859, Ringway was the place to go and see snowdrops. I wonder if there are plenty to be found around the airport this spring?
Our copy also has an added extra tucked safely between its pages – a little bleeding heart flower (Lamprocapnos spectabilis, previously Dicentra specabilis). This plant became a popular addition to british gardens after 1846 when Robert Fortune brought it back from his travels through Japan (1812-1880). I wonder if the person who pressed it managed to identify it?
Corridors and herbarium sheets
Here are a couple shots behind the scenes today. Above, a pile of herbarium sheets to be filed away. These ones are Rubus specimens (brambles or blackberries) – there are hundreds of species around the world.
This is the East Corridor. The herbarium sheets are stored in the green boxes (they had to be green, for botany) and are sorted into geographical areas. This section of the corridor holds European specimens. The bench along the centre should be empty, for working space, but we had to empty out three large store rooms when dry rot was found in the floorboards, so our benches are currently storage areas. Not for too much longer, I hope.
Unusual Trees to Look Out for (4)
Pterocarya fraxinifolia, Caucasian Wingnut Tree, 156/003
Meaning: winged-nut/leaves-like-an-ash-tree.
The Caucasian Wingnut tree in Beech Road Park, Chorlton, Manchester, is a particularly fine example of this specimen tree, which was sometimes planted in our Victorian and Edwardian parks. It is occasionally characteristic of the trunk of this species to divide into two main branches not far off the ground. It belongs to the walnut family (Juglandaceae) and is native to the eastern Caucasus, northern Iran and eastern Turkey. In its native habitat it can reach nearly 100 feet in height, but in northern climates it reaches about 80 feet, with a branch spread of 70 feet. Because of its nearly cubic proportions and because it is relatively fast-growing, it is prized as a shade tree. In a good year, the tree in late summer or early autumn is a delightful and strikingly decorative sight, festooned with its long, pale-green strings of seeds.
BBC Plant finder: “This superb, very large tree is rarely seen in the UK due to its enormous size: there are few gardens big enough to accommodate one. However, there are two excellent specimens in Cambridge and Sheffield Botanic Gardens that show how striking this plant can be. The tree has green leaves that can grow to over 60cm (2ft) long and that turn butter-yellow in autumn. In the summer, it produces eyecatching chains of green catkins that can grow up to 60cm (2ft) long. In its native Iran, it is often found growing by rivers, so its favoured position is in a moist, almost boggy soil where it can also get plenty of light.”
Sheets from the Grindon Herbarium
-Daniel King
Unusual Trees to Look Out for (3)
Pinus wallichiana (Pinaceae), Bhutan Pine 165/026
This one’s named after Dr. Nathaniel Wallich (1786-1854), who was born in Copenhagen but who spent much of his life exploring the botany of northern India and nearby areas. Wallich was among the most prominent botanists of his times. He introduced the seeds of this pine into England in 1827. The tree is native to the Himalaya, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountains, from eastern Afghanistan east across northern Pakistan and India to Yunnan in southwest China. It grows in mountain valleys at altitudes of 1800-4300m (but rarely as low as 1200m), and reaches from 30-50m in height. It likes a temperate climate with dry winters and wet summers.
Our three photographs of living trees are of specimens in Sackville Gardens in the city centre and one in a churchyard in Chorlton, Manchester.
Specimen sheet from the Grindon Herbarium
-Daniel King
Herbology Manchester 