  Lithium abundances are presented and discussed for 70 members of the 50 Myr
old open cluster alpha Per. More than half of the abundances are from new
high-resolution spectra. The Li abundance in the F-type stars is equal to its
presumed initial abundance confirming previous suggestions that pre-main
sequence depletion is ineffective for these stars. Intrinsic star-to-star
scatter in Li abundance among these stars is comparable to the measurement
uncertainties. There is marginal evidence that the stars of high projected
rotational velocity v sini follow a different abundance vs temperature trend to
the slow rotators. For stars cooler than about 5500 K, the Li abundance
declines steeply with decreasing temperature and there develops a star-to-star
scatter in the Li abundance. This scatter is shown to resemble the well
documented scatter seen in the 70 Myr old Pleiades cluster. The scatter appears
to be far less pronounced in the 30 Myr clusters which have been studied for Li
abundance.
