Dr Roger Spencer is Horticultural Botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne. He has worked with the taxonomy of cultivated plants and the Plant Identification Service at these gardens for over 20 years. He has written popular articles on horticultural taxonomy for various journals and newspapers, and a regular column on plant names for Australian Horticulture, also several books on topics including landscape conservation, elms, silver foliage plants and, more recently the five-volume Horticultural Flora of South-eastern Australia and an international third edition of the booklet Plant Names. He has contributed to the native Floras of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, and is currently chairman of the Australian Cultivar Registration Authority.
