Briatol Botany, 1910. 
Sketch of a year's work. 
By James W. White, F.L.S. 
A t the close of a season of successful field-work the botanical 
reporter records his results with proportionate satisfaction, 
mingled with the merest trace of justifiable feeling that credit may 
be claimed by his co-workers and himself for accomplishing some- 
thing of moment in a district so long and diligently worked upon 
as that of the Bristol Coal-fields. The following survey will 
certainly shew that there has been no pause of late in our progress 
towards an adequate knowledge of the local flora, and that many 
matters of real interest in connection with the distribution of plants 
in our area have recently been dealt with. 
The necessity for breaking new ground has been kept in mind. 
In so large a breadth of country it is never difficult to espy some 
portions which have remained hitherto without any definite records. 
However unpromising and unattractive a locality may seem to 
be upon a map it will always yield something of value to a 
systematic search. This consideration serves to explain the 
noticeable fact that many of my notes for 1910 are derived from 
outlying places at some considerable distance from the city. The 
increased facilities for exploration that have been provided during 
the last few years now render it comparatively easy to visit most 
of the parishes in West Gloucester and North Somerset. There 
are still a few tracts, however, unserved by any public conveyance, 
too remote for the average pedestrian, where a stranger is seldom 
seen — spots, in the hill country it may be, of exquisite rural beauty 
and charm of scenery ; or, on the other hand, dreary beyond 
measure in the marshland flats that border our tidal Severn. For 
enabling us to make acquaintance with these havens of peace and 
rest we bless the invention of the bicycle. By its help we reach 
any desired centre and ramble at discretion. 
Not long since, it was mentioned in the report of an excursion 
by the Cotteswold Field Club that a fine colony of Banewort 
( Sambiicus Ebulus J, a rarity with us, had been noticed on the 
ascent to Hawkesbury Upton, a village on that high ridge which 
runs for miles due north from Lansdown along the eastern border 
of our district. We found it easily, extending fifty feet or so on 
the top of a roadside bank, and flowering splendidly. Close at 
hand, on the other side of the way, and again by a farmstead 
below, nearer Hawkesbury, grows Good King Henry or Wild 
Spinach ( ChenopodiuTn Bo 7 ius-Henricus), less often met with in 
