Catalogue description British Museum (Natural History): Department of Botany: 'The Island of Mull' (1978), Data Sheets, Papers and Correspondence

This series contains all the data sheets, notebooks and correspondence that were held by Dr J F M Cannon, Keeper of Botany, at the time of his retirement.

Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure unless otherwise stated

Custodial history: The series was transferred to the archives in 1990.

'The island of Mull, a survey of its flora and environment', AC Jermy and JA Crabbe (eds) British Museum (Natural History) (1978).

• People: John Francis Michael Cannon (1930-)
• Places: Scotland

The project to record, study and catalogue all the plants growing on Mull and its islets, and in the sea that surrounds them, was inaugurated in 1965. By the time The Island of Mull was published in 1978, 34 members of the department had been involved, together with colleagues from the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, the Macaulay Institute of Soil Research, Aberdeen, the Scottish Marine Biological Association, and the Mineralogy Department of the British Museum (Natural History). The final catalogue contains records of 5280 species and varieties belonging to over 1600 genera, distributed over 116,550 hectares (450 square miles) of land and a similar area of sea bed. In spite of the five seasons of fieldwork, totalling 150 man-weeks, the coverage remains incomplete, although the Cyanophyta was the only major group omitted.