An extended account of the flora of Lancashire, or of its fauna, or of
the organic remains preserved in the rocks and the coal strata, is
impossible in the space now at command: it is not demanded either by
pages which profess to supply no more than general hints as to where
to look for what is worthy or curious. A bird's-eye view of
Lancashire, its contents and characteristics, would nevertheless be
incomplete without some notice, however brief, of the indigenous trees
and plants, the birds ordinarily met with, and the fossils. The zest
with which natural history has been followed in Lancashire, for over a
century, has resulted in so accurate a discrimination of all the
principal forms of life, that the numbers, and the degree of diffusion
of the various species, can now be spoken of without fear of error. In
those departments alone which require the use of the microscope is
there much remaining to be done, and these, in truth, are practically
inexhaustible.
Being so varied in its geology, and possessed of a hundred miles of
coast, Lancashire presents a very good average flora, though wanting
many of the pretty plants which deck the meadows and waysides of most
of the southern counties. The wild clematis which at Clifton festoons
every old thorn is sought in vain. In Lancashire no cornfield is ever
flooded as in Surrey with scarlet poppies; the sweet-briar and the
scented violet are scarcely known, except, of course, in gardens; even
the mallow is a curiosity. Many flowers, on the other hand, occur in
plenty, which, though not confined to Lancashire, are in the south
seldom seen, and which in beauty compare with the best. Mr. Bentham,
in his _Handbook of the British Flora_, describes 1232 native
flowering plants, and 53 of the cryptogamia--the ferns and their
allies--or a total of 1285. Of these the present writer has personally
observed in Lancashire more than 500. In the remoter corners another
score or two, without doubt, await the finding. In any case, the
proportion borne by the Lancashire flora to that of the entire island
is, in reality, much higher than the figures seem to indicate, since
quite a sixth part of the 1285 consists of plants confined to three
or four localities, and thus not entitled to count with the general
vegetation of the country. It is not, after all, the multitude or the
variety of the species found in a given spot that renders it enviable.
The excellent things of the world are not the rare and costly ones,
but those which give joy to the largest number of intelligent human
beings; and assuredly more delight has arisen to mankind from the
primrose, the anemone, and the forget-me-not, than from all the
botanist's prizes put together. Better, moreover, at any time, than
the possession of mere quantity, the ceaseless pleasure that comes of
watching manners and customs, or a life-history--such, for example, as
that of the Parnassia. Not to mention all that precedes and follows,
how beautiful the spectacle of the milk-white cups when newly open,
the golden anthers kneeling round the lilac ovary; then, after a
while, in succession rising up, bestowing a kiss, and retiring, so
that at last they form a five-rayed star, the ovary now impurpled. In
connection with the dethronement of the natural beauty of the streams
in the cotton manufacturing districts, it is interesting to note that,
while the primroses, the anemones, and the forget-me-nots, that once
grew in profusion, here and there, along the margins, have
disappeared, the "azured harebell"[45] holds its own. Even when the
whitethorn stands dismayed, the harebell still sheets many a slope and
shelving bank with its deep-dyed blue.
[45] Usually miscalled "blue bell," _vide_ "The Shakspere
Flora."
On the great hills along the eastern side of the county, and
especially in the moorland parts, the flora is meagre in the extreme.
Acres innumerable produce little besides heather and whortle-berry.
When the latter decreases, it is to make room for the empetrum, or the
Vitis Idæa, "the grape of Mount Ida"--a name enough in itself to fling
poetry over the solitude. Harsh and wiry grasses and obdurate rushes
fill the interspaces, except where green with the hard-fern.
Occasionally, as upon Foledge, the parsley-fern and the club-moss tell
of the altitude, as upon Pendle the pinguicula and the cloud-berry.
The hills behind Grange are in part densely covered with juniper, and
the characteristic grass is the beautiful blue sesleria, the colour
contrasting singularly with that of the hay-field grasses. The
choicest of the English green-flowered plants, the trulove, _Paris
quadrifolia_, is plentiful in the woods close by, and extends to those
upon the banks of the Duddon. Everywhere north of Morecambe Bay, as
these names go far to indicate, the flora is more diversified than to
the south; here, too, particular kinds of flowers occur in far greater
plenty. At Grange the meadows teem with cowslips, in many parts of
Lancashire almost unknown. Crimson orchises--Ophelia's "long-purples,"
the tway-blade, the fly-orchis, the Lady's tresses, the
butterfly-orchis, that smells only after twilight, add their charms to
this beautiful neighbourhood, which, save for Birkdale, would seem the
Lancashire orchids' patrimony. The total number of orchideous plants
occurring wild in the county is fourteen; and of these Birkdale lays
very special claim to two--the marsh epipactis and the _Orchis
latifolia_. In the moist hollows among the sand-hills, called the
"slacks," they grow in profusion, occurring also in similar habitats
beyond the Ribble. The abundance is easily accounted for; the seeds of
the orchids, of every kind, are innumerable as the motes that glisten
i' the sunbeam, and when discharged, the wind scatters them in all
directions. The orchids' Birkdale home is that also of the parnassia,
which springs up less frequently alone than in clusters of from six or
eight to twenty or thirty. Here, too, grows that particular form of
the pyrola, hitherto unnoticed elsewhere, which counts as the
Lancashire botanical specialty, looking when in bloom like the lily
of the valley, though different in leaf, and emulating not only the
fashion but the odour. It would much better deserve the epithet of
"Lancashire" than the asphodel so called, for the latter is found in
bogs wherever they occur. Never mind; it is more than enough that
there is whisper in it of the "yellow meads," and that in high summer
it shows its bright gold, arriving just when the cotton-grass is
beginning to waft away, and the sundews are displaying their diamonds,
albeit so treacherously, for in another week or two every leaf will be
dotted with corpses. No little creature of tender wing ever touches a
sundew except under penalty of death. Only two other English
counties--York and Cornwall--lend their name to a wild-flower, so that
Lancashire may still be proud of its classic asphodel.
No single kind of wild-flower occurs in Lancashire so abundantly as to
give character to the county, nor is it marked by any particular kind
of fern. The most general, perhaps, is the broad-leaved sylvan
shield-fern (_Lastrea dilatata_), though in some parts superseded by
the amber-spangled polypody. Neither is any one kind of tree more
conspicuous than another, unless it be the sycamore. Fair dimensions
are attained by the wych-elm, which in Lancashire holds the
place given south of Birmingham to that princely exotic, the
_campestris_--the "ancestral elm" of the poet, and chief home of the
sable rook--a tree of comparative rarity, and in Lancashire never
majestic. The wild cherry is often remarkable also for its fine
development, especially north of the sands. The abele, on the other
hand, the maple, and the silver willow, are seldom seen; and of the
spindle-tree, the wayfaring-tree, and the dogwood, there is scarcely
an example. They do not blend in Lancashire, as in the south, with the
crimson pea and the pencilled wood-vetch. When a climber of the
summer, after the bindweed, ascends the hedge, it is the Tamus, that
charming plant which never seems so much to have risen out of the
earth as to be a cataract of foliage tumbling from some hidden fount
above. Wood-nuts are plentiful in the northern parts of the county;
and in the southern wild raspberries, these equal in flavour and
fragrance to those of garden growth, wanting only in size. Bistort
makes pink islands amid hay grass that waits the scythe. Foxgloves as
tall as a man adorn all dry and shady groves. The golden-rod, the
water septfoil, and the Lady's mantle, require no searching for. At
Blackpool the sea-rocket blooms again towards Christmas. On the
extremest verge of the county, where a leap across the streamlet would
plant the feet in Westmoreland, the banks are dotted for many miles
with the bird's-eye primula.