Some 
of you may remember that I gave a talk to the Gravesend RSPB group (and the North Kent Local Group of the Kent Wildlife Trust) on the subject of Robert Pocock. No – not the Gravesend pub, but the 19th century botanist and naturalist that the pub is named after! I mentioned that we were seeking funds from the Heritage Lottery Fund to support a search for Pocock’s “lost herbarium” at the Natural History Museum in London. We have received funds and the search is on. Over the last six weeks or so we have received training on handling herbarium specimens and we have now found 47 plant specimens! I will be giving a talk to both local groups at some time but if you would like to watch our progress you can follow us on Facebook and also at our website.
Sheet 147 shows our latest find (we started numbering at 100). A wonderful specimen of a Lizard Orchid collected by Robert Pocock at ?Wilmington.
Malcolm
Great project funded by HLF via North West Kent Local Group of Kent Wildlife Trust, at present involving some 20 or so volunteers searching Herbarium at NMH. Judith took this image when a group of us visited last Friday. … Keep checking the Pocock blog and facebook for more news
I stand corrected again Pauline. There are too many words in the group name! The lizard orchid find is brilliant. Unfortunately I did not notice it straight away among the images sent by Judith so for the Facebook post I used the man orchid found at the same time. I tried to change the Facebook page so that it showed the lizard orchid but I got lost trying to do it. Too little time!