2 3 I 



NOTES on YORKSHIRE PLANTS. 



Plants Noted near Leeds and Cawthorne. — During a walk through 

 the Gorge in Roundhay Park, Leeds, on the 19th May, I found a pink 

 blossom of Anemone ?iemorosa, and in the afternoon of the same day I was 

 taking- a stroll in the neighbourhood of Allwoodley Gates and came across 

 a plant of Aquilegia vulgaris in bloom by the roadside. 



On the 28th May, the most prominent plants noted in bloom near Caw- 

 thorne were Equisetum palnstre, E. limosum, Carex elongata, and C. axillaris. 

 — W. E. L. Watt am, Newsome, Huddersfield. nth June 1901. 



Geranium pyrenaicum at Campsall, near Doncaster.— The con- 

 firming of old records being as interesting as the establishment of new, 

 I write to say that on the occasion of the Doncaster Scientific Society's 

 visit to Campsall, on the 13th inst., Geranium pyrenaicnm was found in pro- 

 fusion on a grassy bank in Campsmount Park. The only record for the 

 Don basin in Lees' West Yorkshire Flora is ' Roadside between Campsall 

 and Barnsdale ; E. Lankester (1842).' — H. H. Corbett, Doncaster, 14th 

 June 1901. 



Danewort in Mid-Wharfedale, Yorkshire.— On 4th July I had the 

 pleasure of adding a new species to the flora of Wharfedale — new to ' the 

 books ' which, after all, can but register What is when they are builded, 

 yet probably old as the Tudor farmsteads, or even much more ancient still. 

 Paying- a pop visit to the old Manor House at Castley, east of the N.E. R. 

 viaduct, I was pleased to observe a quantity of Sambucus Ebulus against 

 the wall at the back in the house-close of the building, falling to decay and 

 now uninhabited, save by strolling members of an art fraternity. To me it 

 was a suggestive and unexpected ' find,' as it fills up a gap in the line of its 

 distribution, the nearest stations in which I have seen it of late years being 

 Leckby, north of Boroughbridge, and Liversedge in the Spen Valley, where 

 it was probably artificially adventive. An hour earlier I had gathered the 

 Norman Garlic {Allium arenariuni) by the Wharfe side at Rougemont (the 

 site of an ancient moated castle of the DeLisles) two miles nearer Hare- 

 wood. The Garlic grew where the Weeton Beck, utilised as an outer 

 moat, joined the crescentic reach that formed the impregnable base of the 

 Norman stronghold's south side. This Garlic was used as a pot herb — is 

 to this day. But as to the Dane's Elder, place names ending in ' by ' — as 

 Leckby, Wetherby, Maltby — are said to indicate Danish occupation or 

 origin ; and this ' local habitation ' and the railway station at Weeton are 

 within the boundary of Huby hamlet or township. Such names are not 

 nearly so common in W.R. York as in the Eastern Counties, and the Dane- 

 wort expectably less frequent likewise. This growing of a plant the 

 Danish invaders brought with them is rather a survival than a true Change 

 of flora. Some recent disturbing of the soil at Castley had probably brought 

 within the subtle influence of light, air, and the right temperature for 

 germination, the seeds of the mediaeval herb — there was Gout-weed in 

 plenty near hand, too — but whatever the probably-many causes, I find cor- 

 roborative evidence (and for the West Riding, too, in Sherburn barony) in 

 the curious fact germed in a recital of how, in a.d. 1307, one John Eyton 

 obtained from the Ecclesiastical authorities of his day, ' a Licence to hold 

 Divine Service ' in his private chapel, ' a decent oratory ' as he submits, 

 'within his manor of Lennerton,' . . . 'which manor is much distant 

 from the Parish Church' of Sherburn, 'and oftentimes by the rising of the 

 water, and other impediments, he and his household cannot safely attend 

 at the parish church." Showeth this, how the locality has completely 

 changed, the flood-ridden area now sun-bathed cornland and potato-broad, 

 with the Bishop's dyke on occasion amply capacious enough to carry off 

 the most copious drench of Jupiter Pluvius ! The only remains of the old 

 condition of the surface are, I think, the undrained peat-over-sand lowland 

 about Askham and Askern, and the marshy ' rein '-land or ' rhine'-land* 

 about Gateforth. (* Rein and Rhine = a brook, a watercourse, a narrow 

 dike.) — F. Arnold Lees, Meanwood Lodge, Leeds, 8th July 1901. 



1901 August 2. 



