Mabb.

Professor David John Mabberley , (born May 1948) is a British botanist, educator and writer. Among his varied scientific interests is the taxonomy of tropical plants, especially trees of the families Labiatae, Meliaceae and Rutaceae (in particular Citrus). He edited the plant dictionary ''The plant-book. A portable dictionary of the vascular plants''. The third edition was published in 2008 as '' Mabberley's Plant-book'', for which he was awarded the Engler Medal in Silver in 2009. As of June 2017 '' Mabberley's Plant-book'' is in its fourth edition.

Biography

Born in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, Mabberley won a scholarship to Rendcomb College, Cirencester where he was inspired by biology master, Christopher Swaine, then an open scholarship to St Catherine's College, Oxford, where his tutor was Barrie Juniper and he graduated B.A. in 1970 and M.A. in 1974. Although he intended to work for a doctorate under the cytologist C. D. Darlington he was inspired to move to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, under the supervision of E. J. H. Corner, leading to a PhD in 1973 and D.Phil. (Oxon) in 1975. In 1973 Mabberley was elected the first Claridge Druce junior research fellow at St John's College, Oxford, before being appointed in 1976 to a tutorial fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford (linked to a university lecturership in the Department of Botany, later Plant Sciences, where he set up the "Mablab" with graduate students and post-doctoral research workers from around the world). He served as Dean of Wadham College for many years. Some of the social aspects of Mabberley's period as Dean of Wadham are dramatized in Stephen Henighan's novel ''The World of After''. Mabberley was senior proctor at Oxford 1988–1989, later becoming Curator of the Oxford University Herbaria. He has also served in various capacities at numerous universities around the world, including University of Paris (France), University of Leiden (the Netherlands), University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka), University of Kuwait, Western Sydney University and Macquarie University (both in New South Wales, Australia). From 1995 he held a chair at the University of Leiden, where he is now Emeritus Professor.

Mabberley moved to Australia late in 1996 and ran his own consultancy business there, one contract being as CEO of Greening Australia (NSW). In 2004 he was appointed to the Orin and Althea Soest Chair in Horticultural Science at the University of Washington, Seattle, US, where he was also Professor of Economic Botany in the College of Forest Resources. During his tenure there, he oversaw the union of the Washington Park Arboretum, Center for Urban Horticulture, Union Bay Natural Area, Elisabeth C. Miller Library and Otis Douglas Hyde Herbarium as the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, of which he was the founding director. In March 2008 he took up the newly created position of Keeper of the Herbarium, Library, Art and Archives at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Mabberley has performed fieldwork in many countries over several decades: Kenya (1969, 1970–71), Uganda (1970–71), Tanzania (1971–72), Madagascar (1971), Malaysia, Singapore & Indonesia (1974, 1981), Papua New Guinea (1974, 1989), Seychelles (1978), Panamá (1978–79), Portugal (1984–96), New Caledonia (1984), New Zealand (1990), Sri Lanka (1991), Hawai’i (1998), Cape York, Australia (Royal Geographical Society of Queensland expedition, 2002), Malaysia (2003, 2007), Vietnam (2005), China (2006, 2008), India (2019), Japan (2019).

During research for his PhD dissertation, he travelled widely and collected plants throughout eastern Africa and Madagascar (1970–2), making particularly significant pioneering collections in the Ukaguru Mountains, Tanzania, where he collected at least 14 species of plants (and one new snail species) new to science and restricted to that range. These include a species of coffee, a giant lobelia (''Lobelia sancta'' (Campanulaceae)), a (hairy) balsam (''Impatiens ukagurensis'' (Balsaminaceae)), besides ''Keetia davidii'' (Rubiaceae) and ''Senecio mabberleyi'' (Compositae), both named after him. He is also commemorated in ''Aglaia mabberleyana'' (Meliaceae) from Borneo, ''Begonia mabberleyana'' (Begoniaceae) from Sulawesi and ''Cinnamomum mabberleyi'' (Lauraceae) from Vietnam and Laos, besides ''Homalomena davidiana'' (Araceae) and ''Harpullia mabberleyana'' (Sapindaceae), both from New Guinea, ''Grewia mabberleyana'' (Malvaceae) from Madagascar and ''Hibiscus mabberleyi'' (Malvaceae) from Mauritius, but extinct in the wild.

In August 2011 Mabberley became executive director of the New South Wales Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Australia. In this capacity he was responsible for the management of Sydney's Royal Botanic Garden and Domain, The National Herbarium of New South Wales, The Australian Botanic Garden at Mount Annan near and The Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah, , today comprising Botanic Gardens of Sydney. He left the post in September 2013 and shortly afterwards was elected to an Emeritus fellowship at Wadham College, Oxford. In honour of his seventieth birthday, colleagues and former students prepared a Festschrift, presented to him at Singapore Botanic Gardens, 27 September 2019. In recognition of his work and achievements, he was appointed Director Emeritus, Botanic Gardens of Sydney in 2024.

His archive, especially that relating to ''Mabberley’s plant-book'' is housed at the National Botanic Garden of Wales, of which he was a Trustee 2008-2011 and is an Honorary Fellow since November 2018.

Honours and awards

Among the awards he has received are the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany