Career

Collecting localities

Collections

Literature

 

Pickles, Gordon Harold

 

(Source: Flora Malesiana ser. 1, 5: Cyclopaedia of collectors, Supplement I)

 

Born: 1931, Westerham, Kent, England.

 

career:

Was educated in forestry at Oriel College, Oxford (B.A. 1955). After taking his final examination he joined a Borneo expedition (see below) under the leadership of  G. Arnold, accompanied also by a geologist and a zoologist, aiming at a survey of the Plieran valley and the Usun Apau Plateau.

 

Collecting localities:

The Oxford University Expedition to Borneo, 1955-56.1 Flying from London airport (July 8, 1955) to Sarawak; air reconnaissance (Aug. 3); starting up the Rajang (= Rejang) River (4); Camp 1 in the Plieran valley in primary rainforest (Sept. 12-Oct. 15); Camp 2 in the Plieran valley in dwarfed forest (Kerapa type) (Oct. 24-Nov. 15); Camp 3 on the Usun Apau Plateau in high Kerangas forest (Dec. 18-Jan. 25, 1956); Camp 4 in moss forest on Mt Kalulong (Feb. 8-28); reaching Kuching via R. Baram (March 17); arrived Liverpool (May 21).

 

collections:

In the Plieran valley he was assisted by Ahmad bin Topin and by Aini bin Haji Mahamad (see there), who both did a small amount of individual collecting, and in those cases their name together with Pickles’s occurs on the herbarium sheet. In Oxford Univ. For. Herb. [OXF], Herb. Sing. [SING], and Herb. Sarawak [SAR], numbering SAR 2905-3958; in total 615 numbers of trees were collected. Remaining dupl. will be distributed later; in Herb. Leiden [L]: 318 dupl. (purch.).

 

literature:

(1) As yet nothing is published on the expedition, but in due time G. Arnold will publish some papers and a book of the story of the expedition.