Lichens

Lichens, by Annie Lorrain Smith, is a botanical handbook printed at Cambridge in 1921. Its preface says the volume was delayed by war conditions, which allowed recent work on the subject to be included. Some pages look at early students of the plants. They name Doody, Buddle, Petiver, Sherard and Plukenet, mention the Physick Garden of the Society of Apothecaries at Chelsea, and say that Sherard brought Dillenius to England and nominated him for the post of first Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford.

Other pages are technical. One passage weighs competing views on projecting filaments, including Van Tieghem's explanation that they serve respiration and the different views of Lindau, Wainio and Steiner. A passage on mountain collecting lists sixteen lichens gathered on the Great Casse at 3861 m, with four mosses, and notes that foliaceous species became rarer and crustaceous ones more abundant as the collector climbed higher.