We arrived in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky on a gloomy July morning, after a nine-hour direct flight from Moscow. The primary purpose of this botanical expedition being to replenish the holdings of the herbaria of RBG Kew, UK, and the Komarov Botanical Institute, St Petersburg, Russia, we had decided that the optimum time to travel, from the point of view of flowering plants, would be in the middle of the short northern summer. [An account of an autumn seed-collecting trip to this area can be found in the IDS Yearbook : 2000, pp.114-118].