i^6 baker's north YORKSHIRE. 



are cultivated, and the road-sides, hedge-rows, and waste ground 

 in the neighbourhood of towns, villages, farm-houses, gardens, 

 and parks furnish a large number of these imported plants, but 

 also the woods, the hedge-rows and the pastures are often 

 plainly, and still oftener presumably, of artificial origin, even 

 when yielding trees, shrubs, grasses and other plants, which 

 elsewhere in the district evidently occupy their natural places of 

 growth. 



Excluding those which are probably or certainly extinct, and 

 probably or certainly mis-reported, our list contains the names 

 of upwards of 1 150 species of Flowering Plants and Ferns, all of 

 which have some sort of claim to be enumerated in a catalogue 

 of the wild plants of North Yorkshire. Of these, 882 species 

 appear to possess a more or less clear title to be regarded as 

 aboriginal and genuine inhabitants of the Riding, and so far as 

 we can judge from present appearances, it is these and these 

 only that we must regard as composing its proper and natural 

 flora. Out of the plants which grow wild with us at the present 

 day, we must, if we wish to restrict our list to those to which 

 Nature gives us a title, strike out one species in four as introduced. 

 But a large number of these introductions are now very thoroughly 

 settled down. It is easy to arrange nearly all of them under 

 two categories, tlie species of which, in respect of the plenty and 

 the places in which they grow, differ notably. These two 

 categories are, first, importations by means of Agriculture ; and, 

 second, importations by means of Horticulture ; and the only 

 introduced species which do not range conveniently under either 

 of these heads are about a score of ballast plants and two or 

 three trees. Following the nomenclature of the Cybele, I have 

 called the more frequent and more thoroughly established 

 agricultural weeds by the name of Colonists, drawing the line 

 between them and the Natives so as to exclude from the Native 

 list those species which scarcely occur except in cultivated fields 

 and about rubbish-heaps, but so as to include as Natives a 

 number of species such as Viola tricolor, Senecio vulgaris, 



