Other plant remains mentioned in the summary of plant remains from Newstead, and recorded also from the Lochlee Crannog, are portions of bracken fern, stems of heather, rhizomes of ferns, bark of birch, and hazel-nuts.
3. The number of seeds and fruits obtained from the Newstead deposits is not, I think, inconsiderable, especially when it is remembered that their occurrence in the material examined was to a certain extent accidental, and that it was impossible to select for seeds any special seed-bearing deposits.
Among the samples which contained grain, the associated weed-seeds belong to plants characteristic at the present time of cultivated fields. The occurrence of seeds of Lychnis Githago in considerable quantity among the wheat-chaff (Sample C, Table I) is interesting, in that it indicates that a troublesome weed of cornfields in certain districts at the present day was also a pest in the corn crops of the Romans. The plant is essentially a weed of cultivation, and as such is usually considered to be a weed introduced into Britain with the cultivation of grain crops. In the east of Scotland, even at the present time, it is more a casual in cultivated areas than anything else, so that the occurrence of the seeds among the wheat-chaff from the Newstead station fixes its introduction as far back at least as the Roman occupation of this site. Other weeds of the same natural order associated with the cultivation of crops at the present day, and represented by seeds among the material examined containing grain or wheat-chaff, are those of Stellaria media, Lychnis vespertina, Arenaria serpyllifolia, and what I believe to be a species of Cerastium. These plants at the presezit day are not so completely limited to cultivated fields as is Lychnis Githago, and some of them are probably indigenous. It is interesting to note that Mr. Reid, in his recent paper before the Linnean Society of London on the Pre-glacial Flora of Britain, figures and describes seeds of Stellaria media and Arenaria serpyllifolia from the pre-glacial deposits on the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts.[1]
From the material containing wheat grains, fruits of three species of Compositae were also found. Two of these I have identified as Cnicus arvensis and Picris hieracioides. Both are species common at the present day, and the latter is recorded as pre-glacial.[2] Ranunculus repens and Ranunculus bulbosus are likewise common wayside and meadow plants occurring at the present day in cultivated areas, and both the species were represented by fruits in the samples containing grain. Fruits of a third species of Ranunculus were found, but I have not so far been able to identify it. Among the same grain-yielding samples were found fruits of Polygonum aviculare, seeds of Geranium sp., Medicago lupulina, Chenopodium album, and fruits of a species of Rumex, probably R. Acetosella. The absence of seeds and fruits of common trees, with the exception of those of hazel, finds its explanation probably in the character of the deposits examined. These were, I feel sure, in most cases the debris collected in refuse pits, and although small
1 Reid, in Jour. Linn. Soc. vol. xxxviii. (1908), p. 206.
2 Reid, l.c.
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