Project Purley

The Local History Society for Purley on Thames

H4001 - 22/7/2017

Plant Life in Purley

A description of the flora of Purley is complicated by the difficulties of distinguishing native plants from those which have been deliberately planted by man and accidently spread from other parts of the country.

Plant life is very dependent upon the right habitat and almost any plant will thrive so long as it has a more or less correct combination of warmth, soil condition and the availability of moisture for its species. The work is further complicated by the ability of many plants to lie dormant for many years and then to spring back to life when conditions change. This phenomenum occurred when excavating in the churchyard and soil which had been disturbed after being used for backfill for hundreds of years began to sprout new species of flowers when the spoil heaps were exposed. Unfortunately there was no botanist to hand to identify what turned up.

For the sake of convenience many of these distinctions will be overlooked and we shall seek to describe what can be found in Purley today, or what was to be found in the past.

We will consider the vast variety of plant life in Purley under the following headings:-

Grasses

Wild flowers

Trees and bushes

Farm Crops

Fungi

Ferns, Mosses and Lichens

Aquatic plants

Other plants

We do not cover garden plants

H4001 - 22/7/2017

Back to top »