Best Environmental Web site 2006
Natural History of Warwickshire
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| Flora |
As a Midland county with a variety of soils, Warwickshire has a comparatively rich wild flora. William Shakespeare, who grew up in the county, makes many references to the wild flowers which he must have been familiar with as a child, the best-known of which, from ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, is:
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The diversity of wild plants includes trees and shrubs, herbaceous wild flowers, ferns, mosses and liverworts, lichens, fungi, stoneworts and algae. There are over 5,000 species known in Warwickshire, including over 1,200 types of wildflower. Some are native to the county, having arrived naturally after the last Ice Age, whilst others have been introduced accidentally or intentionally by man and have established themselves as part of our natural flora. Yet other plants are of casual occurrence, appearing and persisting perhaps for a year or two but unable to survive in the conditions here. Rather too many of the once-known plants are now believed to be extinct because of habitat loss and changes in traditional land management
Records of the distribution, status and abundance of the wild plants are kept in the Warwickshire Biological Record Centre in the Warwickshire Museum. A number of books about Warwickshire Wild Plants are published and copies can be seen in Warwickshire Libraries. |