Introduction

A flora is a catalogue of plant species that occur in a geographical region. The region under consideration may be small and local, e.g a county, or it may be very large, e.g. a country or a continent. Some floras, such as Clive Stace's New Flora of the British Isles, are made up of descriptions and keys which provide a guide for botanists who are interested in identifying the vascular plants that are found growing wild in a region. Similarly, Tony Smith's 'The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland' and Jean Paton's 'The Liverwort Flora of the British Isles' provide identification guides for bryophytes. Local floras tend to be different in that they consist of a list of all the wild plants that have been found in an area, annotated with information on distribution and abundance but usually little or no information on their identification. Most county Floras fall into this category.

Almost every county in Britain has at least one county Flora and Glamorgan (Vice County 41) is no exception. Over the last 350 years or so, a long list of recorders including some very distinguished British botanists like John Ray, John Lightfoot and Joseph Hooker, have explored Glamorgan. The 20th Century saw a number of publications on the flora of Glamorgan including H.J. Riddlesdell's contibutions in the Journal of Botany between 1905 and 1934, A.H. Trow's various contributions in the Transactions of the Cardiff Naturalists' Society between 1907 and 1912 and Eleanor Vachell's account and list of the flowering plants and ferns of Glamorgan, which was published in Glamorgan County History (Volume 1) in 1936. The most recent flora of the county is Flora of Glamorgan by A.E. Wade, Q.O.N. Kay and R.G. Ellis, which was published by the National Museum of Wales in 1994. This notable flora was the result of two decades of systematic recording based on the division of Glamorgan into 5km squares in accordance with the British Ordnance Survey grid system. This allowed the authors to provide distribution maps for almost all the vascular plants known to grow wild in the county. It also included an annotated list of bryophytes provided by Roy Perry and a compilation of lichen records provided by Alan Orange. At that time our knowedge of vascular plants in Glamorgan was good but it is probably fair to say that information and records of bryophytes and lichens was incomplete and patchy, despite the enormous and almost single-handed recording efforts by Roy and Alan. Quentin Kay, who was then the Botanical Society of the British Isles (BSBI) recorder for Glamorgan, was a very significant botanical figure in the county and was responsible for many erudite descriptions of the county's flora and its ecology. His knowledge of the flora of Gower was thorough and exemplary and he had a inspirational influence on other recorders who worked with him and came after him. A great deal of detailed information on the history, ecology and distribution of Glamorgan's flora is provided in the the first five chapters in the Flora of Glamorgan, which also provides information on the geology and soils of the county. All of that remains relevant, so we don't think it is necessary to repeat it here in such detail. It is, nevertheless, recommended reading.

In the decades since the publication of Flora of Glamorgan there have been changes in the county's flora and there has been a rapid and extensive evolution of resources that have made wildlife recording easier and more accurate. The availability of GPS technology on mobile phones and other devices allows us to record with eight figure accuracy in the field and there is an enormous amount of literature and online resources available now which help us to make more accurate identifications. Consequently, many groups hitherto regarded as difficult, such as bryophytes, lichens and macroscopic fungi, are now much more within the reach of field recorders than ever before, although they remain challenging. The revolution in communication technology that has occurred since the turn of the millenium has also had many benificiary effects. 

It is against this background that we embarked on the preparation of this Flora. We have both been very active recorders in West Glamorgan in the last 30 years and we feel that the time is right to produce a new flora for this part of south Wales. It differs from those that came before in a number of ways. Firstly, and rather obviously, it is a web-based flora which is freely accessible to anyone. Among other things this allows us to evolve the content and make additions or corrections more easily, as and when they become necessary. Also, it is not a Vice County flora of Glamorgan (VC41) because it only considers part of the county. However, in that it consists of Swansea (including Gower) and Neath Port Talbot (including the Vale of Neath and the Upper Tawe and Afan Valleys), West Glamorgan has well defined geographical and topological borders and is a relatively 'natural unit'. We include vascular plants, bryophytes, charophytes, fungi and lichens with photographs and a short description for each entry. Our knowledge of vascular plants and bryophytes in West Glamorgan is fairly complete and much better than our knowledge of charophytes, fungi and lichens. However, we chose to include these less-well known groups because we felt that we had to start somewhere and we expect our knowledge of their status and distributions in West Glamorgan to grow steadily in the future. Because we provide photographs of every species we don't provide detailed descriptions, although where appropriate we include information that we hope will be useful for distinguishing difficult taxa. This flora also includes species that do not grow 'wild' in West Glamorgan, e.g. some non-native trees and a few garden plants, although we have been somewhat biased and unsystematic in our choices of which to include. We take the view that all of these species make a contribution to the recombinant ecology of West Glamorgan and that their natural status is of no consequence to the diversity of wildlife that make use of them. Another feature of this flora is the description of major habitats in West Glamorgan using a classification system based largely on that used in the State of Nature in Neath Port Talbot report.

We, and others, have amassed a huge number of records for West Glamorgan, particularly during the last 25 years, which has allowed us to plot detailed distribution maps at 1km (monad) square resolution for most of the species included. In a few cases where the availability of data is negligable a map is not provided. We intend to update the maps annually as new information becomes available and this will allow us to monitor changes in our flora into the future. This will be of particular significance in view of the inevitable changes that will take place in land use, population pressures and climate in the decades to come.

We have written all the species and habitat descriptions ourselves and most of the photographs are ours.  Any mistakes or flaws contained within are our fault entirely. Also, we have provided the bulk of the records that have contributed to this new flora, most of which have been made since the publication of the last Flora of Glamorgan. However, many other people have made significant contributions and they include Sandra Stewart, Sam Bosanquet, Quentin Kay, Tony Lewis, Roy Perry, Alan Orange, Tim Rich, Julian Woodman, David Barden, Graham Motley, Karen Wilkinson, George Tordoff, Mark Hipkin, Mark Evans, Mervyn Howells, Teifion Davies, Peter Sturgess, Emma Williams. All our records are stored in the South East Wales Biological Recording Centre (SEWBrEC) database.

We would like to thank Ian Kimber for building this website and Dave Slade (SEWBrEC) for his invaluable help in transferring the data used to build the distribution maps.

Lastly, we dedicate this flora to the memory of Hilary Hipkin who delighted in finding and recording plants and fungi and was responsible for thousands of records made in the Vale of Neath and the Afan Valley. None of this would have been possible without her skills and enthusiasm for furthering our knowledge of West Glamorgan's flora.