In the early 1910s a younger lady set out every single day to stroll the river banks close to Galashiels within the Scottish Borders. Ida Hayward was recording one thing extraordinary: the arrival within the UK of lots of of never-previously recorded plant species from everywhere in the world. Hayward realised that seeds from these vegetation – together with wildflowers, herbs, and grasses – had travelled hundreds of miles hooked up to the fleeces of sheep, earlier than being delivered to textile mills in bales of wool. She was one of many first to refer to those vegetation as ‘wool aliens’, a time period which drew a direct connection between the motion of vegetation and other people.
In 1919 Hayward revealed her observations in The Adventive Flora of Tweedside, co-written with one other botanist, George Claridge Druce. Hayward listed 348 examples of ‘wool aliens’ found in Tweedside. Extra importantly, she additionally confirmed what these ‘extraordinary plant-occurrences’ revealed about ‘the mutual interdependence not solely of people however of industries and communities’. By documenting how the ecology of a small patch of the Scottish Borders had been reworked by the textile trade Hayward drew consideration to the environmental change attributable to the worldwide commerce in wool.
Woollen and worsted manufacturing boomed within the Nineteenth century, significantly in Scotland, West Yorkshire, and Wales. To feed this trade, Britain imported wool from all over the world, principally from locations that shaped a part of its huge imperial community, together with New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Britain grew to become the world’s largest importer of uncooked wool, and by the early Nineteen Twenties round one third of the world’s sheep have been positioned inside the empire’s confines.
Nearly all of these sheep have been merino. Whereas they proved unsuited to the British local weather, merino thrived in Australia, which grew to become the wool powerhouse of the British Empire. The primary merino sheep arrived in Botany Bay in 1797, solely 9 years after the primary European settlement had been established there. Botany would quickly develop into a byword for high-quality merino, and by the tip of the Nineteenth century over 100 million sheep roamed huge pastoral estates throughout Australia. Whereas the cotton trade was underpinned by the plantation system, wool trusted the pastoral economic system, which got here to be related to a distinct type of exploitation. Comparatively low in labour depth, pastoralism required huge quantities of land for the grazing of sheep and cattle. In Australia the enlargement of pastoralism by British settlers, along with sustained violence and harassment and the importation of illnesses, drove Aboriginal individuals off their land.
Pastoralism additionally produced a wholesale transformation of the Australian panorama. Alongside the enlargement of grasslands got here the propagation of so-called ‘weeds’: imported vegetation undesirable by farmers and herders, however which nonetheless thrived within the newly expanded pastures. Thistles grew to become a major problem in Australia from the mid-Nineteenth century: these ‘vegetable plagues’, as one modern denounced them, grew to become the topic of a nationwide marketing campaign of extermination in 1862. Knot grass, pink sorrel (additionally referred to as sheep’s sorrel), and dandelion additionally unfold quickly, suited as they have been to the in depth pastures taking maintain of the Australian panorama, and crowded out native species, decreasing the standard of grassland in order that it grew to become unusable to farmers. The extension of grazing and the elimination of indigenous species akin to kangaroo grass led to fast soil erosion and the resultant degradation of pastures. As the standard of soils and pastures declined, the demand for land accelerated.
Many plant species travelled ‘by accident’: as stowaways in cargo, baggage, and items. However in addition they arrived in seed shipments imported particularly to change the panorama to raised go well with its new ovine inhabitants. The ‘enchancment’ of grasslands promised a scientific resolution for reinforcing agricultural productiveness. In New Zealand grass changed acre upon acre of indigenous bush forest, wetland, and tussock grassland from the mid-Nineteenth century. Sheep, lots of them merino crossbreeds, roamed these new grasslands, which have been usually planted with imported ‘English’ seed mixtures. As in Australia, newcomers akin to dock, watercress, and white clover flourished within the new pastoral environments on the expense of indigenous flora. Related processes altered the ecology of South Africa, the Falklands/Malvinas, and Argentina.
The environmental results of the wool commerce didn’t cease on the sheep farm. Imported wool was normally washed and ‘scoured’, a course of which eliminated grime and impurities. This dislodged the seeds which resulted within the vegetation that Hayward recorded in Tweedside, however it additionally launched giant portions of lanolin, the oily substance present in sheep’s coats. Soaps, acids, and different substances akin to ammonia and bleach have been utilized in these processes. All of this was flushed immediately into streams and rivers. Wool was usually dyed, a course of which used a medley of extra chemical pollution. The air pollution attributable to the dyeing trade was intensified with the arrival of coal-based aniline dyes within the mid-Nineteenth century, which produced a better number of vivid colors, however have been way more poisonous than natural dyes.
Wool manufacturing posed such a risk to the well being of British rivers that an 1871 report by the Rivers Air pollution Fee targeted its consideration on woollen mills and related companies throughout England and Scotland, highlighting the foul state of rivers and streams. By far the worst offender was Bradford Beck, which the commissioners described as a ‘black, filthy, and offensive stream’. The creator of 1 memorandum despatched a stark message concerning the state of air pollution by dipping his pen not in ink, however in water drawn from the River Calder.
Many of the species that Ida Hayward found throughout her walks didn’t develop into naturalised within the UK. As wool scouring and washing started to make use of extra intensive strategies and chemical substances, the variety of ‘wool aliens’ able to germinating after the manufacturing course of fell. Just a few species, nevertheless, had already established themselves. One of many vegetation that Hayward recognized, the pirri-pirri burr, originated in New Zealand and Australia and was nearly actually launched by the wool commerce. Right now, it continues to thrive throughout a lot of the UK and Eire. The British wool trade has lengthy since misplaced the dominance it as soon as loved, however proof of its environmental results lives on in pastures, fields, and rivers in Britain and all over the world.
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Max Lengthy is Analysis Fellow in Historical past at Jesus Faculty, Cambridge.
