Michael J. Crawley

Professor Michael J. Crawley, PhD, FRS, is Emeritus Professor of Plant Ecology at Imperial College London, based at Silwood Park, Ascot in Berkshire. He is the Botanical Society recorder for Berkshire and South Oxfordshire and has written a great many important scientific papers, book chapters and books on botanical themes. He is especially known for his love of the three Rs: rabbits, ragwort and the programming language R (a considerable contribution to practical statistical analyses of large data sets in the biological sciences). Currently Mick Crawley is Silwood’s longest serving staff member. The Flora of Berkshire is surely a tour de force of his knowledge of the plants of his adopted county, for which  he won the President’s Award jointly from the Botanical Society of the British Isles and the Wildflower Society in 2007. His somewhat controversial use of the famous White Horse of Uffington as depicted on the front cover of the book is because, as he rightly claims, the prehistoric hill figure may nowadays be technically resident in the ceremonial county of Oxfordshire, but it still also remains within the historic county of Berkshire. The late Queen graciously accepted a copy of the book as presented to her by the publishers.