It was in order to make their walks more interesting that they first started looking for wild flowers. Edith wrote the names of the ordinary flowers in an exercise book with a space for entering the place and date of finding, and their mother gave them help with naming. In order to make it more amusing for Alice, five of her young friends were invited to join in.

That was the moment that it all began. No one at that point would have believed that a hundred years later a flourishing society would be in existence, having stemmed from those early, very amateurish beginnings. Nor, I am sure, did Edith realise that she was a forerunner of our modern `conservation’ movement when she instilled into those children a respect and awareness for plants in their natural surroundings.

The Society was a very family affair in those early days. Our founder Edith (Now Mrs Dent) was both Secretary and Editor, and — since there were so few reports – her husband wrote interesting articles for the Magazine under the nom de plume of ‘Associate’. Uncles and aunts were persuaded to contribute stories and articles and the children were encouraged to keep Diaries from an early age. Miss M. E. Hale became the first Branch Secretary, continuing for twenty years.

The March 1st Competition which was later called “The First Week Hunt” and now “The Spring Week Hunt” was very popular from the beginning, having some thirty or more entrants for each of the years around the turn of the century. Changing attitudes are brought to our notice when in 1903 March 1lst fell on a Sunday and, as it was deemed unsuitable to collect on that day, the competition was postponed until the following day. Other competitions were also held with good response and members were very active in sending in their Diaries each year for the main collection.

In the winter the family visited India but the Society was not neglected during this time as Miss Charlotte Peck took charge in their absence, being both Secretary and Editor, and continued to give help for nearly four years. The membership increased enormously and Miss Peck wrote that spring that it was taking her five or six hours a day to cope. By now there were sixteen Branches and later Edith took over as Secretary again to share the work. This left Miss Peck to be Editor with the assistance of Harvey Goodwin as Treasurer, who received all subscriptions.

By 1912 rumours of war were beginning and as President of the Red Cross for the area, Mrs Dent was asked to organise VAD detachments for Westmorland and much other work. It was for this that she was later honoured with the OBE. War came in 1914 bringing anxiety and sadness. Though their house, Flass, was safe in the country, all three of her sons were fighting in France, and by the end only one of them — the eldest — returned. Mrs Dent wore black from that time until the end of her life.

The Society carried on. During the war some of its members co-operated in the growing and collecting of medicinal herbs and the collection of sphagnum moss (used for dressings). The Magazine included an article entitled ‘How the botanist may help to capture German trade’.

Mrs Dent’s daughter Violet was only 16 when she became Secretary of the Wild Flower Society which she continued to be for nearly twelve years. Violet also took on the Senior North Country Branch with up to twenty Diaries. An extra mark was then given in several branches for any flower found before anyone else in a branch, or on March 1st. She said “You can imagine the four of us sitting round the library table, my twenty or so Diaries divided between the scrutineers, one person calling out the name of each flower, and the others checking for the earliest date!” The winner of the Junior Prizewinners Branch for that year (1916), with a splendid total of 924 plants to his credit, was young Noel Sandwith, later worked at the Herbarium at Kew.

Junior Branches flourished during the war though senior ones shrank considerably. The Junior North Country Branch grew so large that it had to be divided, so the Scottish Branch was formed with Mrs Williams as Secretary, bringing the number of branches up to twenty. Soon after the war, the Society celebrated a delayed Silver Jubilee. In an article entitled ‘The Birth and Development of the WFS` Mrs Dent wrote: “I do believe the Society has supplied a want as the many grateful letters I have received have proved”.

The Editor’s Letter for April 1922 was written from Old Government House Hotel in Guernsey where the family was staying. It starts with an apology — “Not the first nor I fear the last” – for the late posting of the Magazines. “The Magazines arrived the day we left Flass” she writes, “and passengers must have been amused to see us rolling them up in papers already directed, first in the waiting room at Penrith and then in the train. At each station someone rushed out to post them, and at Preston we joyfully bundled the last lot into the letter-box.“

Writing from Oxford in May 1922, Mrs Dent records not only her impressions of the city and University, but also in particular her meeting with Dr George Claridge Druce, “who you all know is one of the greatest living botanists.“ Dr Druce (1852 – 1932) was one of our early supporters. The Society were so fortunate to have this internationally eminent botanist as a good friend. He took such a kindly, helpful, and fatherly interest in the Society, wrote a number of useful articles for the magazine, and looked through some of our manuscripts before they went to the printers. Lady Davy wrote of him that he never failed to raise his hat on encountering one of his rarer or more elusive finds.

There have always been a large number of our members wanting to increase their botanical knowledge who have joined the (then) Botanical Society and Botanical Exchange Club of the British Isles (now the B..S.B.I.), as well as the Wild Flower Society. From 1924 up to the Second World War, when both Societies were much smaller, we enjoyed ten joint Conversations with the BEC at the Great Central Hotel in London, and were invited to join many of their field meetings. Dr Druce spoke of the WFS as a botanical nursery, in contrast to the scientific Botanical Exchange Club, and called us ‘the Lumpers‘, while we called them ‘the Splitters’, for they subdivided the plants to a meticulous degree!

This happy relationship has in many ways continued, and we have been proud in recent years that several of our members, Dr Dony, Mr Lousley, Mr McClintock, and Mr Swann, have all been in their turn Presidents of the (now) Botanical Society of the British Isles, while still very active in our Society. The Editor’s letters, and many of the other articles in the magazines of the early 1920’s, record travels to many different places, so clearly enjoyed after the long years of the war. One finds in some of the articles the seeds of later developments, for instance (in 1923) “why not send some of your beloved wild flowers to the hospitals?” — perhaps a precursor of the later Invalids‘ Branch (which later became Arcadia) formed in 1926 at the suggestion of Miss Maude Robinson.

There are other pointers for the future such as the reference to Paul Furse (later the distinguished plant collector and Rear- Admiral) “l do not think any member has yet found 1,278 flowers in one year, though, as midshipman, he has had exceptional opportunities for collecting.” The Society was flourishing — in 1920 there were about 338 members, twenty Secretaries, and twenty-four Branches: in 1923 Miss Robinson was confronted with no fewer than seventy little boxes of flowers for identification for the March lst Competition, which must have been an all-time record.

In 1928 the family news takes up much of the Editor’s Letter when it recorded Violet’s marriage on July 4th to Commander C. M. R. Schwerdt, R.N. and her consequent resignation as Honorary Secretary, to be replaced by her sister, Hilda. Violet carried on with the secretaryship of the Northern Branch until she and her husband went abroad some years later; but Hilda who still lived at Flass, became our founder’s main support.

Developments proceeded apace. ln 1926 a new Branch, Valhalla (Branch Z) was established with twelve entrants in its first year. lt was listed as Z for Zealots (members of the Society who had won their spurs, but who wanted to take life a little more easily while still keeping a cumulative Diary). Miss Bacon (later Mrs Foggitt) was the first Secretary, and the rules were changed to allow them to touch but not pick.

This was followed in 1931 by the establishment of Branch I, the Lotus Eaters, for those who wanted after two years of ordinary collecting to go into a cumulative Branch. The new Branch did not compete with the tired warriors of Valhalla as the following little rhyme about the proposed Branch I explains:

Here’s a branch for the people who cannot attain

To such heights as the ‘lions’ of the Prizewinners gain.

But if Z’s for the zealots who peacefully rest

ln the fields of Valhalla, the land of the Blest,

Then I’s for the idlers who, wand’ring at will,

In the land of the Lotus, are happier still.“

This Branch too prospered.

Violet Schwerdt’s children were introduced very early to the Wild Flower Society. Indeed the correspondence column on one occasion includes a comment from a member about our present Treasurer: “What a very young member your grandchild is! (two years). Quite a record I am sure. Dear little soul; what a nice interest to instil into her little mind.”

A further reminder of how times have changed is the mention of the first of our membership lists, in 1930: “To save the trouble of copying out long lists for each individual. the Hon. Secretary has written and duplicated (with immense labour!) the names and addresses of all the members of the WFS, arranged alphabetically in counties.

This list occupied fifteen pages and could be bought for 6d. (2.5 new pence). A computer would have been an unbelievable alternative!

In 1934 five members agreed to keep lists of flowers found by members of the Wild Flower Society in their respective counties, a scheme for County Collections, later to be reflected in the County Records which were kept from 1930 to 1958 (when the use of Bentham and Hooker ceased, and Dandy’s List became the basis of collecting).

The number of counties covered by diaries mounted over the years, and in the end included no fewer than forty-two. In England. Yorkshire (under Kit Rob) achieved a grand total of 1,021; Scotland (with fourteen counties) a total of 765; Ireland (with eight counties) a total of 626. When the scheme ended, Miss Gibbons collected together about seventeen of the county Diaries to lend out: the others were kept by their compilers who lent them to people writing county floras.

In January 1936 Violet Schwerdt and her husband with her two daughters, Rosemary and Pamela, went to Newfoundland upon her husband’s appointment as Private Secretary to the Governor, Vice-Admiral Sir Humphrey Walwyn. This should have been for three years, but the second world war overtook their plans. Violet’s husband became the first Naval Officer in Charge in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and then (seconded to the Royal Canadian Navy) in Sydney, Nova Scotia. It was a long time until they could return to England in July 1945, and the family quickly went for an excited family reunion at Flass.

Much had happened while they had been away. Mr Dent, Violet’s father, had died in 1940. Evacuees, and later, soldiers, had been billeted at Flass: Hilda, Violet’s younger sister, was much occupied with the placing of Land Girls on various scattered farms. But the Society carried on, as it had done throughout the First World War.

Branch Secretaries found time to look after their scattered flocks, and one reads that “Miss Rob, busily cooking for the army at Catterick, even started a new Branch — the Forces Branch . . . One soldier wrote for a new Diary, saying his had been lost on the way back from Dunkirk”.

The Magazine included articles on such topics as the flora of a bombed site in London, on Salisbury Plain, in France, and in Germany, and one on collecting wild plants for drugs (by Dr Roger Butcher, a very good friend of the Society, who was most enthusiastic about this venture). There was in fact a ‘Butcherite’ Branch for a short time — it later changed its name to the Pioneers. This was for people who wanted to go beyond the existing Diary and followed Dr Butcher’s Further Illustrations to include in their collections a number of species not recognised in Bentham and Hooker.

This began in 1946 with Kit Rob as its Secretary and continued until 1954, when Dandy’s List came into use.

The printing crisis of 1974 was followed by a financial one in 1975 which was overcome by the raising of subscriptions, other economies, and the generosity of members. Shortly afterwards, our aims and objects were revised and approved at a special meeting to enable the Society to be granted charitable status. We could then receive grants from certain trusts and reclaim tax on covenants: and a covenant scheme was implemented by Elizabeth Young. The tax thus reclaimed is put in a special Fund with which we have been able to assist conservation projects and the furthering of knowledge of the British Flora. That system of grants is still in operation today.

In 1975 also, the London Tea Party, formerly held in the YWCA and later the Charing Cross Hotel, moved to the large Conversazione Room at the British Museum (Natural History) where it was held immediately after the AGM.

The number of field meetings grew and in 1976 local meetings — some 17 in 1986 were added to the list of main ones, at the suggestion of Eric Philp. These are most enjoyable occasions, both for finding flowers and for making friends.

Elizabeth Norman kindly took over from Violet Schwerdt as the first General Secretary of the Society in 1980 and worked hard in revising our Rules and Regulations. An Executive Committee consisting of the Officers and three elected members was created, and it was hoped that this mechanism would allow the Society to run smoothly and happily into the future. 1980 was memorable not only for the 80th birthday of Violet Schwerdt but for the preparation of the 12th edition of the Diary.

The first hundred years was adapted from an article in the Centenary issue of the Wild Flower Society’s magazine written by the then president Mrs Violet Schwerdt who was the daughter of the founder of the society

Since Professor Clive Stace brought out his first edition of New Flora of the British Isles it was clear to many botanical associations including The Wild Flower Society that we could now use a more up to date reference than Douglas Kent’s revision of Dandy’s list of Vascular Plants of the British Isles. The Society chose this text now known simply as “Stace” as our reference flora but retained Kent’s list with its more detailed list of the apomictic plants like Hawkweeds, Brambles, Dandelions and so on. The progress made in plant taxonomy using both cladistics and molecular biological techniques, led to major taxonomic changes in both Stace 3 and Stace 4. The diary was extensively revised following Stace 3 and is to be revised again following the publication of Stace 4 in 2019.

The most recent changes have involved Social media. The Wild Flower Society now has Facebook group account, a Twitter account and an Instagram account. This means that if you have a personal Facebook account, you can apply to join our otherwise private group. Once accepted this entitles you to post photographs of plants you have found and get them identified, assuming that is possible, by the expert botanists who are members of the group. In summer it is not unusual for an identification to be resolved within ten minutes of it being posted. The Wild Flower Society at one time had over 1,000 subscribing members and although that membership is lower, near 680 now, those who are associated with the society through social media are in excess of 3,000 and increasing every week.