Carex nutlet project – provenance and photography
Carex nutlet project – provenance and photography
For the Durham Archaeology Department collection (DAD) there is no information about origin and identification and this has to be a somewhat limiting factor as to reliability, although the botanical taxonomists, it is hoped, would have correctly identified material. Huntley’s material (JPH) has been collected and identified using local floras and has only been included where she was satisfied with the identification. A few species are known to have been acquired from botanical gardens (***) where cross-pollination is highly possible and at least one accession was clearly wrongly identified. This method of accessing is noted in the tables and readers should take their own precautions with respect to them. Most species are single accessions only as well and thus may well not provide the full range of variability within a species.
Clearly some species are British Red Data book species. Recent accessions of these have been aquired only from Botanic Garden exchanges or collection elsewhere in Europe.
Digital photographs were taken with a Nikon Coolpix 750 or Canon 400D mounted onto a Wild M3 stereoscopic microscope. Nutlets of each species were removed from their utricle sheaths and two were chosen as being reasonably representative of the collection. These were photographed against 1mm graph paper for ease of size comparison. Cell patterns were observed and photographed at higher magnifications although this aspect continues under development .
The image tables includes British species for which Huntley has no reference material. This is important as they may have similarities to other species and readers need to be aware of what is, as yet, not available. [xx] = Number of British Atlas squares in which the particular species occurs today, data from Preston, Pearman and Dines’ New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora 1987-1999