Reflections

Today I am finishing off my two-month stint at Kew Herbarium, where I databased herbarium specimens of African acacias. This will form part of a project modelling the distribution of the group across the entire continent. I have been lucky enough to have received data from several other sources, which will allow me to conduct a thorough assessmnet of this widespread group across the entire continent. All in all it has been a productive time, which involved me going through virtually all of the herbarium's collections for Acacia (and some of those of the Natural History Museum). On Sunday I fly on to Portugal to supplement my data with material from Coimbra and Lisbon herbaria to fill some of the geographical gaps in the existing material I have. And then, in the not too distant future, I hope that the data will be in a workable format so that I can start running some meaningful analyses.