The Study of Plant Life by M. C. Stopes (best ebook reader for laptop TXT) 📕
- Author: M. C. Stopes
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You can see this in an extreme case if you imagine yourself up in a balloon looking down on England as on a map. In certain places you see lakes, that is to say, the rocks and soil are so arranged that they form a basin and hold the water permanently there. Now in a lake, as you know, only water-plants will be growing, so that the presence of a fairly deep and constant lake makes it quite certain what kind of plants must grow in that spot. Imagine an earthquake or some slower earth-movement which is strong enough to change the rocks so that the water all runs away, and the result is that there will be dry land in the same spot where before was the lake. This will cause the water-plants to die sooner or later, and land-plants will replace them.
There is continual change in the arrangement of lakes and rivers, hills and shores, which takes place all around us, but so slowly that we do not notice it. It is slow, and therefore there is not a sudden killing off of any one kind of plant, and a rapid incoming of a different set of plants, but it causes a gradual shifting and moving of the groups among themselves. Sometimes there may be some swift and sudden change, as the result of a landslip or volcano, or in a stream or lake which has been artificially drained, which shows us a very good object-lesson in plant geography.
The importance of the physical form of any place, however, does not only lie in the position of its lakes and streams and the size of its hills. The kind of rock, and nature of the soil covering the rocks, are very important, as well as the many other details of the land.
In England there are no very high mountains, so that you cannot study the effect of great heights on plants, but all the same England affords quite sufficient opportunity for the study of physical geography in its relation to plant-distribution.
Even in the cultivated fields, where man tries to help the plants to overcome their surroundings, you will find the influence of the soil is very largely felt. Ask any farmer about his land, and he may tell you that a certain one of his fields is specially good for potatoes, another for barley, or that in a village a few miles away they can grow splendid crops of strawberries, while his are not worth the planting. Then think of the different kinds of plants for which the different counties of England are noted. No one could get the produce of the cherry orchards and hop-gardens of Kent to grow on the Yorkshire moors. Nor do we find acres of heather moor on the downs in the south of England, but instead there is a short turf with many little flowers which love the chalk and limestone, such as the blue and white polygala, rock roses, and several small orchids.
Now what is the difference between the north and the south of England? It is chiefly one of rock and soil. On the Downs in the south you find a thin coating of brown earth over thick masses of white chalk through the surface of which the water supply quickly runs, so that we get few streams or bogs. In the north the hills are built of coarse sandstones, hard grey limestones, and fine black shales which hold much water, so that there are many swampy places and innumerable streams and little waterfalls. Then, again, the land in the north of Kent, which is so famous for its cherries and hops, is a rich, fine clay, with a muddy and sandy soil, which centuries ago was the bed of a great river, and now is the most important factor in making Kent one of the most fertile parts of England.
If we find that the influence of the physical nature of the land is so strong even in the case of cultivated plants, which are helped by man’s knowledge, we shall expect to find that it is still more felt by the wild plants.
Let us go, for example, to the moors east of Settle, in Yorkshire, where you find the three kinds of rock, the hard limestone, coarse sandstone, and soft, black shales. If you walk across the moors, you will see that the principal plants are heather, bilberry, and several coarse grasses, which grow in more or less irregular patches. If you notice the grasses carefully, you will find that they are of several different kinds, showing varieties in their size, form of leaf, colour, and so on, and that very frequently the different kinds grow on the different types of rock beneath them. After a little experience, you will almost be able to tell what is the nature of the rock on which you are standing by the appearance of the plants at your feet.
If you live anywhere in the south of England, walk over some part of the downs till you see below you in the valley a clay-pit or pottery factory, which shows you that the chalk is no longer under the surface soil, but that it has been replaced by clay. Walk straight towards this place, collecting the plants you meet on the way. On the actual downs you will find many which do not grow near the clay-pit, since they are special chalk lovers. In the clayey valley it is very likely that you may find a pond; if so, walk towards it, noting all you pass on the way. As you get to the edge, reeds and bulrushes, water forget-me-not, tall spikes of water loosestrife, and many others appear which you would have been astonished to meet with on the downs.
Fig. 154. A recently formed pond in Delamere with a dead forest tree standing up in the middle.
A very important factor also is the amount of rain which the district gets. This tells particularly among the ferns and mosses. Along the hedgerows of Kent, for example, where it is rather dry, true ferns will seldom grow, while in Devonshire every hedge and bank has many hundreds of the common polypody fern and the hartstongue. When we come, however, to consider on what it is that the rainfall depends we find that it is the structure, size, and relations of the land masses to the sea and the winds. In fact, it depends on the physical geography of England as a whole. So that in the end the plants and the physical nature of any place are so much in touch that it is almost impossible to do anything in the study of plant distribution without considering physical geography.
Fig. 155. A recently formed pond which has covered a large area of the forest and killed many of the trees. Notice the dead trunks standing and lying about, and the rushes growing near the edge, which would not have been there but for the coming of the water.
Although the changes in physical geography which made and unmake continents are slowly acting around us all the time, it is not often that we can clearly see them taking effect. Photos 154 and 155 are therefore particularly interesting, for they show one of the processes at work. Part of a forest is in the actual course of being killed by the pond which is forming on sinking land. This pond and several smaller ones of the same kind can be studied in the neighbourhood of Delamere forest, in Cheshire. Here the under soil gets washed out in certain places, and the surface earth sinks and forms a hollow in which water collects. In fig. 154 you see one tree standing in the middle of the pond. It is dead, and has been killed by the water (you remember that ordinary plants are drowned by too much water) and in fig. 155 you see a large area entirely covered with water, and the dead trees standing up through it. This pond is spreading rapidly, and is a good illustration of the reverse condition from that seen in fig. 144, where the plants by their growth are filling up a pond. The washing out of the soil and the collecting of the water in this case was quite beyond the control of the plants themselves, but they are supremely affected by it.
PLANT-MAPS
In the last chapter we noticed a few of the many facts which show us that a close relation exists between the plants and the nature of the land on which they grow. We may now try to express these facts in a simple way by making maps of the land according to the plants growing on it.
There are maps of the whole of England, made by the Government, which show all the roads and houses, the chief rocks, hills, ponds, and so on. The geologists have taken these maps and added to them details of the kinds of rock and soil of which the land is built. If now we take fresh copies of the “ordnance” maps, as they are called, and put on them all the plants growing in different associations, we can compare the resulting “plant-maps” with the land-maps of the geologists, and I think you will be surprised to find how much the plant-maps and land-maps correspond.
To do this on a large scale, however, is far too big a piece of work for one person, or a few people, to attempt. We can only do some small piece of work on one area which will show how the rest is done, and yield some interesting details.
Let us suppose, for example, that the moor east of Settle is to be mapped. First get an ordnance survey map on a large scale—25 inches to the mile is the best, but the 6 inches to the mile will do. On the map are marked all the walls, streams, and even some of the bigger trees, so that it is easy to find on it the exact spot where you are standing. For working you should cut the sheet up into at least eight pieces, of regular size and shape, and use one of these at a time in the field.
First get to know the part you are to work on later in a general way, noting the chief plants and in what way they are associated.
Be careful in working to keep your sheets in regular order, and begin with the one at the bottom left-hand corner of the whole map. Find the exact spot on the ground which is represented by the point of the bottom left-hand corner of your first sheet, and put a white stake into it at least two feet high; it is better if you add a little red and white flag, so that you can see it from a distance. Then find each of the other four corners of your small sheet, measuring the distance from a wall or tree if need be, and put in each a white stake similar to that marking the first corner. If your map is on the 25-inch scale, and you have cut it into sixteen equal pieces, you will find that the area staked out on the ground represented in one piece is not so large but that you can see over it, and by walking about within it, get all the features of the plants growing there mapped out on to your sheet. In studying the different patches of
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