THE BRAMBLES OF SUFFOLK E . S . EDEES
W. M. H I N D ' S Flora of Suffolk, published in 1889, contains an impressive list of brambles, but the nomenclature is now badly out of date and we do not know what he meant by some of the names, nor can we be sure, in spite of the help from C. C. Babington which he acknowledges in the introduction, that his specimens were always correctly determined. C. E. Salmon (1907) suggested other names for several of them. I have not seen Hind's Rubus specimens apart from a few sheets in Ipswich Museum (IPS). The specimens Salmon examined are no longer at Ipswich and their present location is unknown. The list which follows takes account of Hind's work and Salmon's comments but is mainly the result of recent observations in the field. Records not followed by a name are my own and, except for a few made during a brief visit to Suffolk in 1968, were all made during 1973, when I spent the last two weeks of July and a week in September exploring the county systematically. Three weeks, of course, is quite inadequate for a thorough investigation, but it is long enough for an outline sketch, which is all that this paper attempts. Suffolk specimens of every species except R. plicatus and R. affinis are preserved in my herbarium. The national herbaria have not been searched for records, though the Suffolk specimens of the late B. A. Miles now at Cambridge (CGE) have been examined. Most of these are dated 1966. The letters E and W stand for the botanical vice-counties of East Suffolk (v.-c. 25) and West Suffolk (v.-c. 26) and not for the administrative divisions of the county. T h e numbers (to be distinguished from dates) are references to the 1 km. or 10 km. squares of the national grid. The richest part of Suffolk for brambles is the Stour Valley and the country between the Orwell and the Stour, but much of the interior of the county is disappointing. Apart from Rubus ulmifolius, which is mainly a hedgerow species, most of the Suffolk brambles are to be found in woods, where there is sufficient light and therefore particularly at their edges and along the rides. Assington Thicks (9237), Dodnash Wood (1036), Holbrook Park (1537), and Spelthorn Wood (8748) are very good. Sometimes there is a concentration of species in a small area. For example, on 24th September, 1973, I followed the public footpath on the west side of Sudbourne Great Wood (4153) north from the road for about 500 yards and saw the following species: Rubus ulmifolius, R. lindleianus, R. selmeri, R. nitidoides, R. polyanthemus, R. sublustris, R. echinatoides, and R. dasyphyllus. But usually in Suffolk where brambles are common there are fewer species.