Item 11 - Letter from J. L. Wright to W. Aldis Wright

1 folded sheet

Grendon House, (Northants.).—Has found the plant known in his neighbourhood as ‘clench’ in Anne Pratt’s Wild Flowers, where it is called the corn crowfoot. Discusses its character.

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Transcript

Grendon House
Tuesday Evening

My dear Sir,

After a good search this evening I have found in the 1st volume of Wild Flowers by Anne Pratt {1}, what in this neighbourhood we call Clench, or Corn Crowfoot as it is described here, it is quite different to the Creeping Crowfoot which you often see land almost as it were tied together with when badly farmed, this roots very near the surface & is easily hoed up when young, it grows about a foot high & bears a small yellow flower about half the size of the Buttercup, but its most striking feature & one which you cannot mistake it by are its very large & prickly seed-vessels which succeed the flower, & which if allowed to ripen and shed in the land takes some years to get rid of, Lime just fresh from the kiln liberally applied is the best and cheapest remedy when land gets infested with it,

Believe me | yrs faithfully
J. L. Wright

W. Aldis Wright Esqre

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The information in this letter was embodied in the following note by Aldis Wright printed in Notes and Queries on 12 Nov. 1887 (p. 387):

‘CLENCH.—A few weeks since I found this word in use at Grendon, Northamptonshire, to describe a common weed which is the especial enemy of the farmer. It is not mentioned in Miss Baker’s “Northamptonshire Glossary,” or in Britten and Holland’s “English Plant Names,” pub-lished by the English Dialect Society; but the kindness of a friend has enabled me to identify it with the corn crowfoot (Ranunculus arvensis of Linnæus), which is known by many opprobrious names.’

{1} First published by SPCK in two volumes, 1852-3, and frequently reprinted.

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2022.