Feedback request: Vicia cracca (2961)

[portwild]

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Specimen #317534

Taxon:	Fabaceae: Vicia cracca L. ("Tufted Vetch")
Filed in taxon folder:	Fabaceae: Vicia cracca L. ("Tufted Vetch")
Collected by:	Mr Frederick Yorke Brocas
Collection date:	1851
Locality:	Great Britain, VC34 West Gloucestershire, Selsley, SO80, 'Selesley'
ex herb:	Mary Playne Smith
Institution:	Gloucester City Museum (GLR)
Image:
fruits/flowers:	mature flowers

Inferred details are marked.

Documented by portwild following initial work by mossysal on 30^th March 2011.

Edit history

date	user	change
27/01/2012	portwild	Added provenance: exherb Mary Playne Smith
27/01/2012	portwild	Added collection date: 1851
27/01/2012	portwild	Added attribute flowerField: flowering
03/01/2016	oldnick	Deleted locality: GB VC34 Selsley
03/01/2016	oldnick	Added locality: GB VC34 Selsley, 'Selesley'
03/01/2016	oldnick	Added collector: Mr Frederick Yorke Brocas

N.B. reporting of the edit history is currently fairly unclear and misleading. Most edits made to specimens appear as a pair of 'add' and 'delete' entries, which may not be together in the list. There are also often 'minor' edits, which are made automatically (rather than due to user activity), for example to merge synonym names.

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User comments about this sheet

portwild wrote

collector's initials may be IJB

[Chris Liffen]

[David Price]

I cannot identify whose initials these are but am confident that the sheet forms part of the herbarium of Mary Playne Smith of Nailsworth (date c. 1851)

[Chris Liffen]

FWIW : I believe the following to be correct.
Mary Playne Smith was the daughter of Daniel Smith and Martha Playne, born 1816, Minchenhampton, Gloucs. She died 1877 in Gloucestershire.
One of several children. Brothers included several who were solicitors, and one who was a medical student.
In 1851 - 1871 censuses, she was living at High Beeches, Nailsworth (as a member of widowed mother's household, then in household of unmarried brothers William and George Smith). There are few references to her on the web, that I have been able to find.

[David Price]

Collector details quote Kent & Allen (1984) as having stated "Floreat 1830 - 1885".

I have created a wiki stub which needs to be expanded.

[Chris Liffen]

Your stub has expanded somewhat
http://herbariaunited.org/wiki/Mary_Playne_Smith

[oldnick]

It's just possible that the collector is Frederick Yorke Brocas, although the first initial doesn't look like F; see handwriting samples on http://herbariaunited.org/collector/15062/ But Brocas doesn't seem to have collected in Glos, except 1 specimen at Bristol. I wondered if 12/6 was part of a date.

[Chris Liffen]

I will leave you to discuss this point with DP !

[oldnick]

CLL's note suggests F Y Brocas is important enough in BSBI history to merit a wiki, if anyone can find enough info about him (unusual name! and his association with Groom-Napier (Mantua & Montferrat) is intriguing too). He has 221 h@h specimens.

[Roger Horton]

A few gleanings:

Transactions and Proceedings of the Botanical Society of Edinburgh (1841) records: F. Y. Brocas, 4 Mill St. Conduit St. London.

Herbarium, notably of mosses, is/was at Saffron Walden Museum, according to 'A Flora of Cambridgeshire', 1964. Perring et al.

Publications: British Mosses. (Catalogue.), Issue 1, Frederick York BROCAS 1852 [may be just a single page] ... plus Poetical Leaflets, 1887.

Another 'Frederick Brocas' of Wokefield Park, Berks., lived only 1807–1826, admitted Trinity Coll. Cambridge, 1825. Perhaps remembered in the naming of family members in subsequent generations.

[Chris Liffen]

Frederick York(e) Brocas was a British subject born in Paris on 23rd Oct 1827 and baptised in Willesden, Middx. His parents Alfred Brocas, a gentleman, and Caroline both seem to have died young. Frederick married Letitia Jane Pottle of Winchester (a fly dresser and daughter of a fishing tackle maker), 3rd March 1854 at St Paul Covent Garden, when he described himself as a botanist as he did on subsequent censuses. Frederick died in Chelsea, 16th Jan 1891 of pleurisy, which resulted in a post mortem and inquest. Letitia died in 1897. They had several children.

Frederick lived most of his life in and around Bloomsbury. He was an assistant librarian of the Linnean Society 1853-58 (http://plants.jstor.org/person/bm000390697) and a dealer in books, engravings and apparatus.

When The Botanical Society of London was dissolved, the library and herbarium were auctioned. A great deal of the herbarium material was purchased by the young Brocas - probably the start of his business in dealing with things botanical and scientific. He kept it available for reference as the "London herbarium of reference", but over a period of time - it was dispersed and little of it has been traced. Some of his personal collection has come to light in the 'depths' of the Horniman.
source : D E Allen The Botanists p60