Biographical note

James Cullen has been a professional plant taxonomist for over 50 years, working particularly on the classification and identification of plants in cultivation (especially Rhododendron) at Liverpool and Edinburgh Universities, at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, and in Cambridge. With the late Dr S. M. Walters, he was the initiator of the first edition of The European Garden Flora and is responsible for two spin-offs, The Orchid Book (1992) and Manual of North European Garden Plants (2001). Sabina Knees is a taxonomist at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and although now working on plants of the Middle East, particularly the flora of the Arabian Peninsula and Socotra, she spent over 20 years working as a horticultural taxonomist for the Royal Horticultural Society and the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh and is a founder member of the Horticultural Taxonomy Group (HORTAX). She was editor of The New Plantsman for seven years and worked initially as a research associate and then as a member of the editorial committee on the first edition of The European Garden Flora. Suzanne Cubey has worked at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (RBGE) since 1987, originally as a researcher, and then later becoming the Assistant Secretary on the Editorial Board for the first edition of The European Garden Flora. Since 2005 her main role has been as Assistant Herbarium Curator with particular responsibility for the cultivated plants, where she curates the cultivated specimens in the RBGE herbarium and manages the vouchering of research material from the living collections.