Editorial

by Jim Foster

Regular readers will know that for many years the author of this page has been Richard Stewart, however he resigned from the Committee at the Annual General Meeting in

September. I have taken over the mantle as the

sole editor where recently Richard and myself were joint editors.

Richard has undertaken a tremendous amount of work for the conservation of butterflies in Suffolk. He has been Conservation Officer (Butterflies) since the formation of the Suffolk Branch in 1993, County Recorder (Butterflies) since 1994 and Joint Newsletter Editor of the Suffolk Argus from July 1998. Throughout his period of office he has been a very active committee member and carried out numerous tasks on behalf of the Branch. This work culminated in the publication of'The Millennium Atlas of Suffolk Butterflies' in 2001. Richard's outstanding endeavours were acknowledged recently when committee colleagues presented him with Michael Salmon's superb new book: "The Aurelian Legacy - British Butterflies and their Collectors". Well done Richard, and thank you for all the enthusiastic work you have done on our behal£ An advantage Richard had when writing the editorial was that he could draw on his experiences as County Recorder, furthermore, he was in a previ~us incarnation an English teacher, and therefore had a way with words. Your present editor, a retired qualified accountant, has more of a way with figures than with words, consequently readers may well find the editorial rather shorter than previously. This is a new venture for me but I will do my best. In the previous issue of The Suffolk Argus under the Lavenham field meeting, reference was made to an unidentified plant as follows, "with just one plant, probably a spurge, causing identification problems in the well-cleared former railway cutting". Two members, Derek and Valerie Soper who attended that meeting decided to return to the site in early June and found it in flower. They noted the botanical characteristics and identified it as Common Gromwell Lithospermum officinale, a member of the Borage Family. They pointed out that Gromwells have a very hard seed hence the scientific name that means "stone seed". I note in Simpson's Flora of Suffolk that the species is, "Formerly frequent, now becoming scarce. Not usually in any quantity". Thank you Derek and Valerie for identifying this plant for us. For those who have yet to attend a Suffolk Branch field meeting this emphasises the fact that although Lepidoptera are the main motive for the meetings most of those who attend have interests wider than butterflies and moths. Thus field meetings can give rise to us furthering our knowledge and understanding of all aspects of natural history. Turning to this issue, those of you that have been following the Apollo articles by our former Chairman James Mann will see that he has at last found his quarry. Episode 4 also includes illustrations of the butterfly. Enclosed with this newsletter is the 2003 programme. The Committee have as before endeavoured to create a varied selection of meetings both 'home and away' and for moths as well as butterflies. The out of county trips provide members with the opportunity of seeing species that are absent or uncommon in Suffolk. We would like to see more members attending the field meetings as only a small proportion of the membership in Suffolk currently participate. These meetings can be a pleasant social event in addition to the natural history, so why not give them a try.