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Brynmawr sits at the summit of the Ebbw Faw and Clydach valleys, one of the highest towns in Wales at around 400 metres above sea level, on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The plateau character is unmistakable: ling heather and bilberry dominate the open moor above the town to the north; gorse is dense on the valley-rim rough ground, and the Clydach Gorge to the south-west — a National Nature Reserve of limestone gorge ash woodland — adds a distinctive flora rarely found elsewhere in the valleys region. Sycamore and hawthorn dominate the sheltered valley nooks below the town; the combination of moorland and gorge forage gives Brynmawr bees access to an unusually varied late-summer flow.

Sycamore is the dominant May flow tree throughout the borough, flowering profusely on the valley sides from Blaina to Brynmawr. Hawthorn on the valley-rim hedgerows and blackthorn in the gorse-edge scrub supplements the April flow. Bramble is exceptionally dense on the extensive reclaimed colliery tip and forestry margins — a prolonged and reliable mid-summer crop — and rosebay willowherb adds colour and forage on every disturbed bank. White clover covers the playing fields and recreation grounds of the valley-floor settlements; the Clydach Gorge ash woods below Brynmawr add a limestone-flora element unusual in the valleys. Ling heather and bilberry on the plateau above 350 metres at Beaufort, Brynmawr and Tredegar give accessible late-summer heather forage rarely available this close to a valley settlement. A strong ivy flow on old stone terraces and chapel walls closes the year in October.