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DR. ST. BRODY'S WORK IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE. 



By James W. White, F.L.S. 



A valuable asset in Gloucestershire botany appears to have 

 been lying unregarded for many years in a collection formed by 

 the late Dr. O. St. Brody during his residence at Gloucester, which 

 is now housed in the City Technical Schools. This herbarium is 

 entirely restricted to plants of the county ; it furnishes evidence 

 of most careful and accurate work (which the author's much 

 earlier publication — the Flora of Weston-super-Mare — did not 

 suggest) ; and it gives us a number of new records. These were 

 made chiefly in the Bristol district, along the Severn shore at the 

 Passages ; on that little bit of seaboard which confers upon 

 Gloucestershire some semblance of a maritime county. There the 

 plants seem to have remained unnoticed by Thwaites, Stephens, 

 and other Bristol botanists, although they might have reached 

 the ground more easily than St. Brody could from Gloucester. 

 This reflection, of course, rests on me also, but somewhat less 

 strongly perhaps, for I have had the satisfaction of finding several 

 of the species, without, however, realizing their importance ; and 

 one or two had become extinct before my time. The discovery of 

 these specimens is well timed, in view of a recent announcement 

 by Gloucestershire botanists of their intention to prepare a com- 

 plete county Flora. 



The following finds by Dr. St. Brody appear to be topographical 

 additions to vice-county 34 : — 



Vicia lathy roides L. Near the Old Passage ; June, 1867. 



Eryngium maritimum L. Severn shore ; July, 1869. Now 

 extinct in the county. In 1887 there was a fair number of plants 

 on a shingly beach below the New Passage. In October, 1901, 

 one plant only could be found ; excursionists and visitors to the 

 neighbouring tea-gardens having rooted out the remainder. One 

 plant still there in 1902, and in 1903. But a little later there 

 came a heavy storm on a high tide ; the waves swept the beach 

 from end to end, and then the last trace of this species in Glou- 

 cestershire disappeared. 



Galium erectum Huds. Heath near Dursley; June, 1864. 

 This antedates my own gathering of the plant on Breakheart Hill, 

 Dursley, by nearly forty years. 



Valerianella den lata Poll. var. mixta Dufr. Field at Dursley; 

 July, 1865. 



Arctium pub ens Bab. New Passage; July, 1864. 



Salsola Kali L. Shore, New Passage ; July, 1870. Almost 

 certainly extinct. I have never met with a specimen north of 

 Portishead. 



Obione portulacoides Moq. Shirehampton ; July, 1867. Swete 

 likewise records it from Shirehampton in the Flora Bristoliem 

 prior to 1854. I also saw a small quantity on the Channel side 

 of Avonmouth railway-station in 1879. This was soon afterwards 

 destroyed when work commenced on the first Avonmouth Dock. 

 None has since been seen in Gloucestershire. 



