Past research pre-1865

The plant information and data collected needed to be compared to what we know may have grown in the area. I say “may” because we cannot be entirely certain as systematic recording of plants and trees was only just being introduced in the 18th century. To date, there is still no overall authority on plant recording, in terms of coverage by area or regularity.

Sources

For the purposes of this enquiry I have relied upon the descriptions of the area by the writer Charles Dickens, local historian Douglas Allport, and an article on the farm in the Illustrated London News (June 1853). The major reference material though has come from Daniel Cooper’s 1836 book Flora Metropolitana, Or Botanical Rambles Within Thirty Miles of London, which I was lucky to discover in the Horniman Museum and Gardens archives.

Cooper’s book has provided the basis for research comparison as he notes the scientific names of plants found in two areas surrounding the Friern Manor Farm Estate: Peckham Rye (1836: 7-8) and Road-side up Forest Hill, and in the Wood (1836: 8-10).

I have then compiled a comparison table to compare the plants and trees of the past using the historical sources: Cooper (1836), Allport (1841), and Dickens (1850), with the present using the results from the iNaturalist citizen science project May to June 2024.

Field Flowers by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844), from Daniel Cooper’s Flora Metropolitana, Or Botanical Rambles Within Thirty Miles of London (1836, pviii)