Dr Henk Beentje

After a thesis on the taxonomy a genus of Apocynaceae (Strophanthus) I worked as a jack of all trades in the East African Herbarium, Nairobi, for five years; a lot of field work, a lot of herbarium curation, and meeting a lot of Kenyan and international researchers. There followed a stint as a freelance consultant, working on the “Centres of Plant Diversity” publication, as well as doing inventories of forests on Zanzibar and Pemba.

In 1991 I started working for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, on a fixed term contract of three years revising the palms of Madagascar under John Dransfield; we found so many new species that the donor added an extra year to my contract. In 1995 I joined RBG Kew as a full member of staff, working on the Compositae of East Africa under Nicholas Hind. In 1997 I also took on the editorship of the Flora of Tropical East Africa, editing 86 parts and writing up fourteen families.

I retired from Kew in 2013 and continued writing flora treatments (for Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, Gabon, Central Africa and Zambesiaca); I am also an active member of the East African Plant Red Listing Authority, with whom I have, since 2005, prepared more than 2000 Red List assessments.

• PhD Agricultural Sciences (Plant Systematics), University of Wageningen, 1982
• MSc Biology (Plant Sciences), University of Amsterdam, 1978
• BSc Biology, University of Amsterdam, 1973

• Engler Medal in Silver, 2012-13
• Kew Medal, 2012
• Botanical editor, Webbia (University of Firenze), 2010-
• Editorial board member, Flore d’Afrique Centrale (Brussels Herbarium), 2010-