No active collecting was attempted during February, consequently very little was added to the Archive, which now contains 7,377 items of information from 1990 contributors.

A draft contribution to The Cultural History of Plants was submitted on schedule, and work continued on A Folk Flora and the editing of the Local Names database, which currently contains 13,526 entries.

6,522 searches were made of the website.

We were saddened to learn of the death of Hilary Belcher, who had been a steadfast supporter of the Archive for many years.  Hilary spent her professional life working on algae at the Freshwater Biological Association before retiring to Girton, Cambridge, where she developed an interest in folklore, regularly contributing notes to the Folklore Society’s FLS News.  With her  lifelong scientific and domestic partner Erica Swale she was also a regular contributor of, sometimes rather quirky, articles to Nature in Cambridgeshire.