Feedback request: Apera spica-venti (200705181136_6863)

[oldnick]

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Specimen #403186

Taxon:	Poaceae: Apera spica-venti (L.) P. Beauv. ("Loose Silky-bent")
Filed in taxon folder:	Poaceae: Apera spica-venti (L.) P. Beauv. ("Loose Silky-bent")
Collection date:	1936
Locality:	Great Britain, VC28 West Norfolk, Breckland, TL89, 'Breck'
Institution:	Aberystwyth University Herbarium (ABS)
Image:

Inferred details are marked.

Documented by xmhcman on 31^st December 2015.

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oldnick wrote

A search of 'Breck' gives 28 Audus and Ferguson specimens, 3 of them dated 1934, the rest 1935 (Ferguson was a Cambridge student, perhaps at this time) and some specify the county, variously as Cambs, Suffolk, Norfolk. I struggled in the past to find a grid ref common to these areas, and the best I could come up with was TL78 which, if entered in the box above, generates 'VC26,VC28'

[David Price]

See http://herbariaunited.org/core/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7261

[Roger Horton]

Audus may be using the word breck to describe habitat rather than particular a place.

A Flora of Cambridgeshire (1964) Perring et al., says of Breckland that it "is a tract of heath-covered country about 300 square miles in area, embracing the towns of Brandon, Thetford and Mildenhall, and streaching far enough to the south-west to cross the River Kennett and cover a few square miles of Cambridgeshire". The latter area is said to include Chippenham and Kennett. A similar habitat on the Furze Hills at Hildersham, is also mentioned. There are frequent references in the Flora to the 'Breck fringe'.

No grid reference could include the whole Breckland area described above apart from the uninformative 'TL'.

At Red Lodge (4km east of Chippenham but in Suffolk; as on sheet 239801) there is still a remnant of breck habitat, much reduced by enclosure and the widening and re-routeing of the A11.