SAMPLES of birch bark have made the long journey from Chagford to the British Museum in London for a special research project.

Dr Pauline Burger, an analytical chemist from the department of conservation and scientific research at the museum, contacted staff at Stone Lane Gardens to request bark samples from a North American cherry birch and a native silver birch.

Stone Lane Gardens is a five-acre arboretum that holds important national collections of wild birch and alder trees.

More than 1,700 trees from 140 provenances now grace the garden, collected from around the Northern hemisphere by the garden's creator, Kenneth Ashburner.

The samples will be used in a research project involving molecular analysis on tars and pitches, products made from the distillation of wood and bark, to help create a database of 'molecular fingerprints' that can aid identification of ancient artefacts.

Paul Bartlett, the manager of Stone Lane Gardens, took the samples to London.

He said: 'We are delighted to be involved in such an interesting and important project, as it highlights the importance of preserving national collections of plants.

'While collecting material from the wild would be difficult and costly, having a national collection on your doorstep means easy access to all that research material.

'It is a potential gold mine of data waiting to be unlocked.

'One of the charitable aims of Stone Lane Gardens is to increase and share our knowledge of birch, and we also benefitted as Dr Burger passed me a lot of information stemming from previous scientific research.'

The annual 'Mythic Garden' sculpture exhibition celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, and opens on May 6.

For more details, call 01647 231311 or visit http://www.stonelanegardens.com">www.stonelanegardens.com