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The Fyfield Pea is a
bushy, hairless perennial with angular stems which scramble up any nearby
hedgerow to a height of five feet or more and which carry a wealth of
half-inch, crimson, slightly fragrant pea-flowers on long stalks in late
June and July. It owes its Latin name to the small tubers which form
underground and which distinguish it from other members of the peaflower
family.
The Fyfield
connection was established in 1859 when Octavius Corder, tenant farmer of
Fyfield Hall and a keen naturalist, noticed the existence of a hitherto
unrecorded peaflower "found abundantly in almost every cornfield and
hedgerow in the parish", also in Willingale and, he thought, High Ongar.
The following year his elder brother, Thomas Corder, a distinguished
botanist and Fellow of the Linnean Society, published an account of the
plant, reporting that in some places "it is so abundant as to damage the
corn". And indeed it was abundant over a three mile stretch of the
district; to the extent that local farmers, who had known the plant in
the area for at least fifty years, called it "Tine Tare" (literally: fork
vetch). It was at Thomas Corder's suggestion that the name "Fyfield Pea"
was adopted universally for the plant and members of the botanic world
wondered where it had come from and where else it grew.
The ensuing hunt
revealed a number of other locations where Lathyrus Tuberosus was either
prolific or had been seen just occasionally. Possible sightings were
soon reported from as far afield as Blankney, near Lincoln, from Suffolk
and from Plymouth. There was even a report of the plant growing near
Wandsworth steam-boat pier but the authenticity of all these claims was
not properly tested. Until a century ago, Lathyrus Tuberosus was
distributed widely across mainland Europe. It was particularly common in
France, Holland and Germany, where it was considered to be “nearly
ineradicable”. Circumstantial evidence grew that the plant may have been
imported accidentally into Great Britain in ballast from Europe as
reported sightings were checked and confirmed from several areas with a
coastal connection: the shingle at Eastbourne, Cardiff Docks, Kings Lynn
and close to the railway near Darlington.
Another origin was
suggested by the discovery that the plant was growing in profusion in a
marsh on Canvey Island, spilling into the nearby parish of Bowers
Gifford. The plant had been well-known on Canvey since at least as early
as 1730 and a case was built that the edible tubers of Lathyrus Tuberosus
had been brought to this country by Dutch settlers in about the year
1620. Another, unattributed account puts the date at 1506.
Unsurprisingly, there is little historical evidence to add substance to
this theory but the story is plausible and certainly in the nineteenth
century the little tubers had the country name of "Dutch mice".
Neither of these
accounts explain how Lathyrus Tuberosus reached either Fyfield or Woolpit
in Suffolk, the only other inland district with no railway link where it
has been reported. Both villages were then, as now, in corn-growing
areas and the most likely explanation is that imported seed-corn was
contaminated with the pea seed.
Today, more than a
century after these events, the Fyfield Pea clings on in just a few
places in the district and even one of these was ploughed up recently.
However, it is unfair to blame its demise solely on intensive modern
farming methods and on the chemicals in use today because a general
decline in abundance from the lush levels recorded by the Corders was
being reported as early as the turn of the twentieth century. Perhaps
the principal reason is that, not being native to this country, the
Fyfield Pea was never destined to naturalise freely and more vigorous,
indigenous plant species have slowly but inexorably supplanted it.
Lest this account
should give the impression that Fyfield’s proprietorial claim in respect
of the Fyfield Pea is no greater than the claims of other places where it
has been discovered, it is worth remembering that it was here that
Lathyrus Tuberosus was first identified in Great Britain as a distinct
and separate species. Nowhere in this country has this pretty plant ever
been found to be growing in greater profusion than the parish whose name
it carries and whose residents continue to take pride in the rare
distinction of having a plant named after their village.
And what of the man
who started it all by staking Fyfield's claim to distinction? Octavius
Corder was born in 1828, probably in Exeter and he trained as a
pharmaceutical chemist. He moved to Fyfield sometime in the late 1850s,
taking the tenancy of Fyfield Hall which was then a working farm and part
of the Forest Hall estate. While at Fyfield, his wife, Margaret bore him
six children, two of whom died and were buried here. By the end of the
1860s, the Corders had moved on to East Anglia, where Octavius was
President of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists Society in 1880. He
died at Brundall in Suffolk in January, 1910.
Marcus Dain, Wheel
Cottage
Further information
about the Fyfield Pea and source references for this article may be
obtained from the writer.
© Marcus Dain 2004 |