Birmingham Museums Birmingham Botany Collections Liverworts Edited by Phil Watson © Birmingham Museums Version 1.1 November 2013 Birmingham Botany Collections - Liverworts 2 Birmingham Botany Collections - Liverworts Introduction The collection of liverworts in Birmingham contains over 4,200 specimens within the herbaria of four individuals (Rhodes, Bagnall, Russell and Stone), brief biographies of who have been given in the fascicle on Mosses. The collection is much more international than the moss collection with approximately half of the specimens coming from Great Britain and Ireland and half from the rest of the world. Of the British specimens almost half, just under 1,000, come from England and while Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire are the best represented counties there is far less of a local West Midlands emphasis as they only account for about a third of the English specimens and only 8% of the collection as a whole. There are over 500 specimens from Wales the vast majority of which were collected in the two counties of Merioneth (over 300) and Carnarvon (150). Scotland and Ireland have just over 250 specimens each, the former largely represented by Perthshire (just under half) and the latter by County Kerry (60%). Half of the foreign specimens are from Europe with Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Finland figuring prominently. Eighty per cent of the 560 or so specimens from the Americas are from the USA and Canada and the remainder predominantly from South American countries with just a handful from Central America. Asiatic specimens (over 250) are almost exclusively from Australasia and Japan. Less than one per cent of the collection, about 40 specimens, comes from Africa and another one per cent has no provenance. PGM Rhodes The most important group of liverworts is the collection of almost 3,000 formed by Rhodes and presented to the museum in 1928. Almost 1300 of his specimens come from Britain. Wales is best represented with 478 specimens, 404 of which come from Merioneth and Carnarvon. Slightly fewer come from England but with no obvious focus on any particular county. Of the 179 examples from Scotland, 73 come from Perth and 50 from Inverness while half of the 149 from Ireland are from County Kerry. Rhodes collected some 400 specimens himself, either alone or in the company of others. For example he collected 41 specimens from the Channel Islands in the years 1907-1909. For his Welsh collecting he often teamed up with DA Jones (Merioneth in 1910, 1911, 1916, 1919, 1924, 1925, Carnarvon 1925, Denbigh 1925 and Brecon 1927) and others: with Jones and Cleminshaw (Merioneth 1915), Jones and Duncan (Merioneth 1917), Jones, Wilson and Wheldon (Carnarvon 1910) and the veritable bryologists’ gathering of Jones, Armitage, Wheldon, Tetley and Knight (Carnarvon 1919). He collected with Duncan in Worcestershire every year from 1910 to 1913 and with Knight in Gloucestershire (1911, 1928) and Herefordshire (1925). Over 1600 of Rhodes’ specimens are foreign though he only collected 121 of these himself, all from Switzerland. The collection is truly world wide and many of the specimens were acquired from well known bryologists across the world or from British experts travelling abroad. In Europe one can mention, for example, specimens from the Canary Isles collected by E Armitage and from France (acquired from Charrier and Corbiere), Italy (Corti and Gresino) and Switzerland (Meylan). His new world collection came via a few well known collectors; he received items from Canada (from Brinkman and MacFadden), the USA (Haynes, Kingman, Dutton, Schallert and Rapp), South America (Dusen, Spruce). The same is true for his Asian material such as that from Japan (from Lisaba, Sasaoka and Hisauchi) and Java and Sumatra (from V Schiffner). J E Bagnall Bagnall’s collection of liverworts is somewhat meagre (at 700 specimens) compared with his collection of mosses. He collected 206 of his 428 British specimens himself between April 1873 and November 1903 almost exclusively in Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire the only exception being a single item from Merioneth. Specimens from England dominate with 295 examples of which 235 are from the three local counties of Worcestershire, Staffordshire and Warwickshire. There are 69 items from Ireland (49 of which come from County Kerry), 41 specimens from Wales (largely from Merioneth and Carnarvon) and 23 from Scotland. Foreign specimens account for 272 items well over half of which (176) are from Scandinavia and mainly collected by Lindberg. Beyond these one can mention 41 specimens from Austria largely collected by Breidler and 28 from the USA by Austin. 3 Birmingham Botany Collections - Liverworts TH Russell Russell’s collection of 355 liverworts is largely British (287 items) with 160 from England, 47 from Ireland (mainly Kerry), 42 from Scotland and 38 from Wales. There is no real focus and even the sixty specimens which he collected himself cover at least nine counties. His foreign collection is the smallest at 68 examples the bulk of which were collected by Lindberg and are from Finland or have no provenance. He collected five specimens himself in France on two trips in 1892 and 1902. JB Stone Stone’s collection is the smallest and has just over ninety British specimens many collected by himself in Carnarvon, Derbyshire, Devon, Durham, Perth, Staffordshire and Worcestershire with a few others supplied by Bagnall. He had 158 foreign liverworts 99 of which are from Canada and collected by J Macoun (3 by Terry); the remaining 59 come from Norway, Switzerland, France and Germany and were mainly collected by Stone himself. The Checklist The checklist below gives collection data drawn from the specimen packets and is arranged in five columns as follows: 1 County for British specimens, arranged in the order England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland; country or region for foreign specimens in the order Europe, Americas, Asia, Africa. Note that old “historic” county and country names have been retained and no attempt has been made to rationalise these into modern boundaries. Most of the liverwort specimens are not recorded by Vice County so again no attempt has been made to retrofit the locations into Vice Counties. 2 Detailed location as given on the packet. Variant spellings, especially for Welsh place names, have been recorded as on the packet. As, in several cases, the handwriting on the packets is approaching illegibility some place names, especially foreign ones, are subject to interpretation by those who may be more familiar with the areas in question. 3 Date of collection is given as dd.mm.yyyy; where the day of collection is not known this is given as 00.mm.yyyy. Undated specimens are listed as n.d. 4 Collector(s) 5 The herbarium from which the specimen derives Very few packets contain detailed habitat data so this has not been included. Due to the large number of foreign specimens it was decided to present the British specimens first followed by a separate listing of the foreign ones. The British species are numbered individually according to the system used in the second edition of the Census Catalogue (W Ingham, A Census Catalogue of British Hepatics Moss Exchange Club, York 1913), with the addition of a few extra species and varieties not included there. This system has been retained below as it reflects the manor in which the collection has been arranged historically and still is; there has been no recent assessment of it nor any attempt to bring the taxonomy up to date. The foreign specimens are stored with less taxonomic precision and so they have simply been presented below in alphabetic rather than any form of taxonomic order. 4 Birmingham Botany Collections - Liverworts British Specimens 1 Sphaerocarpos michelii Norfolk Holverston 21.12.1912 W H Burrell Rhodes Norfolk Holverston 21.12.1912 W H Burrell Rhodes 2 Sphaerocarpos texanus Gloucs Bromsberrow 26.04.1910 H H Knight Rhodes Gloucs Bromsberrow 26.04.1910 H H Knight Rhodes Hereford nr Foy 00.03.1923 E Armitage Rhodes 4 Riccia crozalsii Anglesey Rhosneigr 00.03.1918 W H Pearson Rhodes Merioneth Arthog 00.12.1908 D A Jones Bagnall Merioneth Aberhamffre, Barmouth 00.10.1911 P G M Rhodes Rhodes Merioneth Harlech 00.06.1910 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes 6 Riccia lescuriana Westmore nr Deetham 00.06.1912 H C Broome Rhodes Carnarvon Portmadoc 00.10.1908 Jones & Owen Rhodes Merioneth Harlech, Gerddi-Bluog 21.08.1917 Duncan & Rhodes Rhodes Merioneth Ffridd, Harlech 22.08.1916 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes Merioneth Harlech 00.06.1910 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes Merioneth Aberhamffre, Barmouth 00.10.1911 P G M Rhodes Rhodes 7 Riccia bifurca Hereford Whitehouse Wood, Golden 00.05.1920 E Armitage Rhodes Valley Sussex Fairlight Cliffs, Hastings 00.05.1911 W E Nicholson Rhodes Merioneth nr Harlech 00.12.1917 D A Jones Rhodes Ayrshire Knockdolian 00.10.1921 E Armitage Rhodes 8 Riccia warnstorfii Sussex Heathfield Park 00.10.1913 W E Nicholson Rhodes 9 Riccia commutata Gloucs Bromsberrow 31.10.1912 H H Knight Rhodes var. acrotricha Sussex Barcombe 00.10.1912 W E Nicholson Rhodes 10 Riccia glauca Gloucs Newent 00.03.1911 Knight & Rhodes Rhodes Staffs Canwell 00.03.1898 Bagnall Russell Warks Grange garden, Erdington 00.02.1882 J B Stone Stone Channel Guernsey, Les Pezenes 00.03.1907 P G M Rhodes Rhodes Isles Merioneth Llanbedr 00.12.1917 D A Jones Rhodes var. subinermis Somerset Buncombe Wood nr Taunton 00.00.1922 W Watson Rhodes 11 Riccia sorocarpa 5 Birmingham Botany Collections - Liverworts Gloucs Newent 00.03.1911 Knight & Rhodes Rhodes Staffs Drayton 00.02.1898 Bagnall Bagnall Staffs Pottal Reservoir 00.06.1895 Bagnall Bagnall Worcs Redmarley d’Abitot 00.03.1911 Knight & Rhodes Rhodes Anglesey Rhosneigr 00.03.1918 W H Pearson Rhodes Merioneth Harlech, by railway 00.06.1910 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes Pembroke no detailed location 00.05.1907 A Brinkman Rhodes Forfar Kinnaird Mill n.d.