DHBlog019 · An article by Alex Mills
I’ve been helping to hunt down the first VC9 records of plants on the Dorset Rare Plant Register (DRPR). Well, it keeps you out of trouble, I suppose. One of the fun aspects of this has been to become a bit more familiar with the histories of some of Dorset’s botanists. A few names crop up repeatedly, such as Richard Pulteney (1730-1801), Thomas Bell Salter (1814-1858), John Clavell Mansel-Pleydell (1817-1902; author of The Flora of Dorsetshire (1874; 2nd ed. 1895). And some very famous figures in early botany in Britain also feature, such as William Turner (c.1509-1568) and John Ray (1627-1705). These are all men. Indeed, the vast majority of recorders on the ‘1st’ list are men. This was not because there were no female botanists, but because opportunity and representation were distinctly lacking – something we’re sadly still having to work hard to try to rectify. Although the trend is slightly less pronounced in the more recent first records (with stellar botanists such as Lynne Farrell, Helena Crouch, and Sophie Lake all featuring). For the 225 taxa whose firsts all date to before 1900, only one is attributed to a woman: Mrs Allen of Stalbridge.
Mrs Allen of Stalbridge made the first record for Fumaria vaillantii (Few-flowered Fumitory): Stalbridge, ST71, 1866 (The Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland Database (BSBI DDb)). The specimen is apparently in the Dorset Museum herbarium, which is good because the date is given as 1868 in The Flora of Dorset by H.J.M Bowen (2000) so could do with checking at some point!
And what other plants did our Stalbridge Allen find in nineteenth century Dorset? The BSBI DDb has eight records which appear to be from the Allen in question. Because the locations attached to the original records are simply ‘Stalbridge’, the grid references for these are given at the hectad level, as is frequently the case for older botanical records.
And Mansel-Pleydell’s Flora contains 41 records for ‘Mrs Allen’.
The discrepancy in the number of records is worth noting. Whilst the BSBI DDb is an incredible resource, there are still many historical records which have not made it on there (anyone out there volunteering to go through all the records in all the historical floras?). Still, despite holding fewer records, the DDb contains three species not found in Mansel-Pleydell: Gentianella amaraella, Hottonia palustris, and Verbascum lychnitis. So, in total, we have here 44 records for 44 taxa, all recorded by Allen from ST71. The records are also all from Stalbridge or close by. The Kickxia spuria from Fifehead Neville represents something of an intrepid expedition.
This got me thinking: can these plants still be found in the Stalbridge area? Six of the of the taxa are on the DRPR, none of which has a post-2000 record. Indeed, only 19/44 of the taxa recorded by Allen have post-2000 records from ST71. Of the nine threatened taxa, only one has a post-2000 record: Oenanthe fistulosa. One, Gentianella campestris, is potentially extinct in VC9, with the last record on the DDb being Bowen, H.J.M from Tadnoll in 1872.
This focussing upon a single recorder might be dismissed as a rather myopic view to take. Or this little exercise might, if you’re feeling that milk of kindness running through your veins, act as a little prism through which to see an indication of the sorts of (not so little) changes that our flora has experienced since the time when Mrs Allen was out botanising around Stalbridge. Depletions on the local scale can point to larger pictures of declines. It can also serve as a reminder of the value of following the maxim: “Think Globally, Botanise Locally…”
Of course, we don’t know for certain that these plants have disappeared from ST71. 20+ years without a record is fairly lengthy, but not irrefutable evidence for absence. Maybe someone would like to take up the challenge to find Allen’s missing plants?
And finally, I’ve tried and failed to find further information about Mrs Allen outside the sphere of botanical records. A Sarah Elizabeth Allen was buried in Stalbridge in 1890 ‘in her 50th year’ and a Sarah Jane Allen in 1874 ‘aged 33 years’, so either could, potentially, be the Allen of the records. It would be grand to hear if anyone knows more.
There are many more stories which the plants and the botanists of the DRPR hold, and which we can hopefully share.
Editor’s Postscript:
I thought I would check on Mrs Allen using those well-known genealogy websites and this is what I found.
Sarah Jane Bolshaw, daughter of Samuel and Ann, was baptized on May 29th 1840 in the village of Church Minshull, Cheshire. Her father was a farmer who owned Minshull Manor with just under 300 acres of land and four farm hands. In 1868 she married George Allen in Church Minshull. George was from Eccleston, where nearby Eaton Hall was the country seat of Lord and Lady Grosvenor. George's father (George) was a Land Agent probably employed by Lord and Lady Grosvenor. In 1871, George and Sarah Jane were living in Cooks Farm near Stalbridge where George was a Land Agent for Lord Richard Grosvenor, son of Lord and Lady Grosvenor and later to become Baron Stalbridge. Sarah Jane died in January 1874 at the tender age of 33.
Sarah Jane could be the Mrs Allen in question. In 1871, there were no other Allen’s in the district who would have had the means and opportunity to botanise. Both George and Sarah Jane were from relatively well off families and she was brought up in the country. There is some mystery around how she was recording plants in Dorset two years before she married George in Cheshire, but it is possible she was living there or visiting there perhaps in connection with the Grosvenor estate. In the 1861 census, for example, she is among a group of visitors at another farm in Cheshire that included two people listed as Land Agents.
However, Sarah Jane is not the only possibility. Sarah Elizabeth Riley was born in 1841, the daughter of John Riley, a gentleman. She married Samuel Booth in Barnes, Surrey in 1864. Samuel was a doctor from Salford. At some point Samuel died and Sarah Elizabeth’s whereabouts are unknown until she remarried a George Allen in 1876. George was also a widower who lived in Grove House, Stalbridge and was employed as a Land Agent.
Remarkably, it looks like there were two Mrs Allens, both married to the same man and both called Sarah. If the dates are correct, then Sarah Jane was probably the botanist, but in 1866 she was not yet married to George. There is no record of Sarah Elizabeth being in Stalbridge before 1876.
How did botany work at that time? Presumably she collected and pressed plants and recorded the details with the specimens. Perhaps Sarah Elizabeth found her plants and gave them to someone she knew? Or perhaps the dates are misleading and it was all Sarah Elizabeth’s work. After all, she was the daughter of a Gentleman and so perhaps more likely to have been botanising than a farmer’s daughter. The mystery remains unsolved.
