UNDER the motto 'Put on a poppy', the combined Devon and Cornwall 2010 Poppy Appeal will be launched by Cornwall's Lord Lieutenant, Lady Mary Holborrow, at the Eden Project today (Thursday.)

This year's Appeal for Devon and Cornwall will focus support on the recently wounded and bereaved of the British Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A team of Royal Marine Commandos will abseil from the roof of the Mediterranean biome carrying giant poppies to plant in the legion's Garden of Remembrance. VIPs will then plant their own poppy crosses before the playing of the Last Post by a Royal Marine bugler.

'The appeal aims to equal or better last year's amounts of nearly one million in Devon and £440,000 in Cornwall,' said Cornwall's RBL county manager Keith Naylor.

'The past nine years of conflict have increased the need for the legion's help today and for years to come.'

The RBL currently spends more than £1.4-million a week in its work helping over 160,000 other members of the armed forces family, ie, dependants, veterans and the bereaved.

There is also a poster campaign targeting support for the wounded and bereaved.

It features Emma-Jayne Webster, the fiancée of a young soldier killed in Afghanistan last year and Gunner Mark Stonelake, from Paignton, who lost a leg in Afghanistan.