The Ferns of the Axe”

I was recently lent a beautiful copy of ‘The Ferns of the Axe and its Tributaries’, written by the Rev. Z.J. Edwards (1799-1880). The copy is of the Enlarged Edition of 1866 and has, pasted into it, obituaries of Zachary Edwards published in The West of England Express, Pulmans Weekly News, and the Chard and Ilminster News. At the time of his death he was Vicar of Misterton, but before this we was Rector of Combpyne from 1842 until 1869, and it seems that much of his work on ferns was done during that time. Combpyne does not have a large population and he doubtless had time on his hands which he spent travelling the Axe catchment in search of ferns. The Enlarged Edition also includes ‘Lyme, Charmouth and neighbouring parishes, with an account of the flower Lobelia urens, found wild near Axminster, and nowhere else in Great Britain’. Lobelia urens (Heath Lobelia) still clings on near Axminster, and can be seen on AVDCS walks such as the one on 31^st August this year.

Edwards lived during the Victorian Fern Craze, when ferns of all kinds were collected and either dried as herbarium specimens, or cultivated. (The book includes a chapter on ‘The Cultivation of Ferns’).The demand for the rarer British ferns was so high that the populations of some have never recovered. Another aspect of the Craze was the search for abnormal forms of common fern species. Hundreds of these were collected and described, and ‘Ferns of the Axe’ mentions, for instance, 85 varieties of the Soft Shield Fern, 42 of the Hart’s-tongue Fern, and 12 of the Common Polypody.

Some of the species recorded by Edwards are now rare or extinct in the Axe Catchment. The latest Atlas of the British Flora shows no recent records for the Adder’s Tongue Fern or the Moonwort. Others have hung on. One of Edwards’s localities for the Royal Fern is ‘Offwell; Colwell Moor, and Copse of Smallcombe’. This must be very close to the Devon Wildlife Trust’s Hawkswood Reserve, where we saw Royal Fern on an excursion in June.

Vicars and Rectors are now extremely busy people, and the days of the naturalist parson are probably over. As we watch our local vicar dashing from church to church on a Sunday morning, both we and they can look back to a more leisurely time when, after the weekly service, their predecessors would ride out in search of ferns or other examples of ‘the choicest productions of a gracious God’.