ESSEX   BOTANY   AND   MYCOLOGY  GROUPS 

Native. In his 1862 Flora, George S. Gibson quotes a record from John Gerarde's 'The Herball or Generall Historie of Plants'. London 1597, - "it groweth in the ruins of a brick-kiln by Colchester, in the grounds of Mr George Sayer, called Mile's End". And optimistically predicts; " This will probably be refound". There are dots in the Fern Atlas and the Atlas of the British Flora 1962 for TQ99, and TM22, but these have yet to be substantiated by detailed records, and neither myself or  Stanley Jermyn were aware of the presence of the dots when he compiled his Flora (1974). TM22 suggests the grassland of the Walton on the Naze cliff top. Although we have looked for it, it is such an elusive plant that we can't say it's not there. No further information has been forthcoming from the Biological Records Centre or from the British Pteridological Society, and they may have been card entry errors.