Birmingham Museums Birmingham Botany Collections Lichens Edited by Phil Watson © Birmingham Museums Version 1.0 June 2014 Birmingham Botany Collections - Lichens 1 Birmingham Botany Collections - Lichens Introduction The collection of lichens in Birmingham contains over 3,800 specimens within the herbaria of six individuals (Rhodes, Stone, Whitwell, Bagnall, an anonymous collection and Scholes). Brief biographies of Rhodes, Stone, Bagnall and Scholes were given in the fascicle on Mosses; Whitwell and the anonymous collection will be discussed below. As with the holdings of Liverworts there is a significant international element again due to the incorporation of the Rhodes collection. There are just over 1,660 specimens from Britain and Ireland and 2,200 from the rest of the world. The 860 specimens from England come from 35 different counties. The biggest group (146) is from Warwickshire, the majority collected by Bagnall with fewer by Rhodes. Yorkshire, Shropshire, Somerset, Cambridge and Devon are the next best represented counties with between 100 and 51 examples. Over half (263) of the 480 Welsh specimens come from Merioneth with a further 90 from neighbouring Carnarvon. A third of the 145 Scottish examples are from Perth and Forfar and of the 84 Irish ones 61 come from Counties Kerry and Down. Finally there are 92 specimens from the Channel Islands. The 2,200 strong international collection shows a distinct bias towards Europe with 1,535 specimens from 20 countries or regions. However the majority come from Switzerland (472), Sweden (289), Italy (229) and Russia (129). The 637 examples from the Americas are overwhelmingly from the north (420 from the USA and 205 from Canada) with only 5 from Central America and 7 from South America. Asia, Africa and Antarctica are represented by just 25 specimens. P G M Rhodes The most important group of lichens which dominates the entire collection is that of over 2,950 specimens formed by Rhodes and presented to the museum in 1928. Just over 1,000 of his specimens come from Britain and of these he collected almost a third (315) himself, predominantly in the Channel Islands and Cambridge (1908-09), Oxford (1910), Pembroke (1910 and 1924), Co Kerry (1924) as well as collecting locally in Warwickshire and Worcestershire. He teamed up with D A Jones to collect 170 specimens from Wales in 1910, 1924, 1925 and 1927, mainly in Merioneth (126 examples) but also in Carnarvon, Denbigh, Anglesey and Brecon. He also collected 4 specimens in Somerset in 1918 with W Watson. The rest of his specimens were supplied by a variety of other collectors the most notable of whom were W Watson (Somerset), D A Jones (Wales), A R Horwood (Leicester), D Lillie (Caithness), J Glover (Co Down), H H Knight (Gloucester), M C Knowles (Ireland) and J A Wheldon (Lancashire). However, almost two thirds of Rhodes’ Lichen collection (1,929 specimens) are foreign. He collected just over 10% of these himself in Switzerland between 1911-1926. He collected in Switzerland with J Aebischer in 1923 (20 specimens) and Aebischer supplied him with a further 180 plus specimens from his own collecting. The collection has over 200 specimens from Sweden the majority collected by C Stenholm between 1894-1928 with smaller groups from A H Magnusson (1917-1925), A Hulphers (1916-1923) and E P Vrang (1904-1924). Italy is represented by over 150 examples collected by C Sbarbaro (1909-1925) and around 30 by Gresino (1913-1925). Countries represented by 50 specimens or more are Germany (collected by Voigtlander, sometimes with Tetzner), Austria (F Bresch), France (A F Jeanjean) and Russia (from the 1908-1909 expedition to Kamatchka by Komarov and Savicz). Beyond Europe the specimens from North America are most numerous. S Rapp supplied over 200 examples which he collected in Florida between 1906-1929. Other American collectors who provided Rhodes with specimens were J M Grant (Washington 1921-1926), P O Schallert (North Carolina 1913-1924), H E Hasse (California 1890-1915) and M F Miller (1898-1912). The majority of his relatively few Canadian pieces were collected by F A MacFadden. J B Stone The dominance of Rhodes’ collection is illustrated by the fact that the next largest collection of lichens in Birmingham is that of Stone at a meagre 281 specimens. Of these only 53 are British and the majority were collected by Stone himself in Devon, Yorkshire, Perth and 2 Birmingham Botany Collections - Lichens Merioneth (all in 1886) and Carnarvon (1887). His 228 foreign examples are dominated by a group of 164 collected by J Macoun in Canada. He collected 38 specimens himself on trips to Norway (1882 and 1889) and a further 15 on his travels to France (1886), Switzerland (1888) and Japan (1891). W Whitwell The herbarium of William Whitwell FLS (1839-1920) was presented to the museum by his family in 1921. It comprises mainly around 5,000 specimens of flowering plants and ferns. Included among it however are 267 specimens of lichens which form the third largest group in the collection. All but one of these are British and although many are undated those that are represent some of the earliest specimens in the collection. Thus there are examples from Scotland collected by G Webster in the 1850s. The majority (around 200) were collected by W A Leighton in Carnarvon, Cumberland, Devon, Merioneth, Shropshire and Yorkshire and where dates are given they fall within the 1870s. Whitwell collected only 19 specimens himself, mainly from Yorkshire in the 1880s. Other known early collectors represented by a few examples are W Gardiner, J Nowell, J M Crombie and G Bohler. J E Bagnall Bagnall’s collection of lichens is surprisingly small at 180 specimens compared to his 4,500 mosses or even his 700 liverworts. It does however continue to demonstrate his personal activity and predominantly local interest as over half of it (97 examples) was collected by Bagnall himself in Warwickshire. The next largest group is around 20 specimens collected by E M Holmes in south west England. The single foreign example in his collection was collected by Stone in Norway. Anonymous Collection The person who formed the next largest lichen collection is unknown as there appears to be no associated data other than the specimen packets themselves. Three quarters of the 161 specimens are British and one quarter foreign. Roughly half (76) of the collection has packets which are annotated with a set of initials (which may read HO but the writing is very flowery and other interpretations are possible). It seems probable that this person may be the one who assembled the collection. The collecting events thus initialled span the period 1920-1925 and took place in Hampshire (1920, 1922, 1924), Cardigan (1920), Channel Isles (1921), Cambridge and Derbyshire (1924), Warwickshire (1924, 1925) and Norway (1925). The only other foreign specimens were collected by Rhodes and Aebischer in Switzerland and Rhodes also supplied four British specimens (3 from Pembroke and 1 from the Channel Isles). Roughly half of the British examples in this collection however have no collector information. It seems that whoever formed this collection was acquainted with Rhodes but beyond that little can be ascertained. T S Scholes As with his collection of mosses the Scholes collection, although the smallest, contains the earliest examples all 17 of them having been collected by W Gardiner in Aberdeen and Forfar between 1842-1845. 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 lichen specimens are not recorded by Vice County so again no attempt has been made to retrofit the locations into Vice Counties. 3 Birmingham Botany Collections - Lichens 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 (especially that of C Stenholm) 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 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 (below p. 62). As there has been no recent assessment of the collection or any attempt to bring the taxonomy up to date and as the collection is currently stored in three different formats both the British and foreign specimens are presented alphabetically under the names recorded on the packets. British Specimens Acarospora admissa Merioneth Talsarnau 00.04.1915 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes Acarospora benedarensis Co Dublin Broad Strand, Howth 13.05.1922 M C Knowles Rhodes Acarospora fuscata Shropshire Haughmond n.d. W A Leighton Whitwell Yorkshire Hainworth Moor, Keighley n.d. T Hebden Rhodes Denbigh Minera, Wrexham 09.01.1925 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes Acarospora lesdainii Yorkshire Bill Horn Lane, Keighley 00.12.1914 T Hebden Rhodes Acaraospora sinopice Merioneth Talsarnau 00.04.1915 P G M Rhodes Rhodes Acarospora smaragdula Merioneth Barmouth n.d. W A Leighton Whitwell Merioneth Llandanwg 29.07.1925 Jones & Rhodes Rhodes var.