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Professor David John Mabberley , (born May 1948) is a British Botany, 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 Adolf Engler Medal in Silver in 2009. As of June 2017 Mabberley's Plant-book is in its fourth edition.
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. Etaerio - A Plant News Weblog: Dr. David Mabberley Joins Faculty at Univ. of Washington at www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org 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. New Keeper for Kew's Historic Herbarium at www.bgci.org
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 Tiliaceae Grewia mabberleyana, Phillipson , Wahlert & Lowry, Candollea 70(2): 202.2015 (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.
In 1993 he was elected President of the Society for the History of Natural History. In 2005 he was elected President of the IAPT.
In 2016 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to horticultural science, particularly to plant taxonomy and tropical botany, as an academic, researcher and author.
In 2018 he was presented with the award of Doctor of Science (DSc honoris causa) by the Vice-Chancellor of Macquarie University in recognition of his outstanding contribution to horticultural science.
Honours and awards
Among the awards he has received are the José Cuatrecasas Medal for Excellence in Tropical Botany and the Peter Raven Award (by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists "to a plant systematist who has made successful efforts to popularize botany to non-scientists"), both in 2004. In 2006 he was awarded the Linnean Medal of the Linnean Society of London and, in 2011, the Robert Allerton Award for Excellence in Tropical Botany of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, USA. He is a Corresponding Member, American Society of Plant Taxonomists (since 1999) and Fellow, Indian Botanical Society (since 2015).
Published books
Categories: 1948 Births, Living People, People From Tetbury, British Botanists, Botanists Active In Kew Gardens, Alumni Of St Catherine's College, Oxford, Alumni Of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Fellows Of Wadham College, Oxford, Fellows Of The Linnean Society Of London, People Educated At Rendcomb College, Members Of The Order Of Australia, Linnean Medallists
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