We received the following news from the Arnold Arboretum, and know our readers will be interested to learn more about this famous scientist in our midst. We wish him all the best. For the complete story visit http://arboretum.harvard.edu/saluting-a-paragon-of-plants/.
Throughout its 140-year history, the Arnold Arboretum has advanced our understanding of biodiversity through the work of some of the most significant people in plant science. Among this select group is Senior Research Scientist Peter Del Tredici, who retires from the Arboretum in January 2014 after 35 years. Over that time, Peter has made many indelible contributions to the stewardship and study of the living collections as well as to the fields of plant morphology, plant exploration, public horticulture, urban ecology, and the science of climate change. A uniting theme in his work has been to bridge the gaps that traditionally separate the fields of landscape design, horticulture, and ecology.
Peter began his career at the Arboretum in 1979 as an assistant propagator in the Arboretum’s Dana Greenhouses. Over three subsequent decades at the Arboretum, Peter has been recognized for his research on an array of plants and plant families, including Ginkgo biloba, conifers and dwarf conifers, magnolias (Magnolia spp.), stewartias (Stewartia spp.), and hemlocks (Tsuga spp.). Since 1984, Peter has also curated the Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection, conducting extensive research into their origins and leading a comprehensive restoration effort to return them to their traditional design. He has won numerous awards including the Jackson Dawson Memorial Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1986, the Arthur Hoyt Scott Garden and Horticultural Award in 1999, and the Veitch Memorial Medal from The Royal Horticultural Society in 2013.
Deeply interested in the Arboretum’s historical work in Asia and the introduction of Asian plants, Peter participated in eight collecting expeditions to China for the Arboretum: Hubei Province (1994), Zhejiang Province (1989 and 1995), Jilin Province (1997), Guizhou Province (2002), Jiangxi Province (2004), Sichuan Province (2005), and Chongqing Province (2007). He has also collected a wide variety of plants in various parts of North America. The author of more than 150 scientific and popular articles, Peter has contributed extensively to the Arboretum’s journal, Arnoldia, as writer of more than 60 articles, member of the editorial committee, and as editor from 1989 to 1992.
From 1992 to 2003, Peter served as Director of Living Collections, stewarding the care and expansion of Arboretum plant holdings and contributing to efforts to improve plant health and to embrace more sustainable methods of landscape maintenance. Through his leadership, the Arboretum renovated its 100-year-old drainage system to improve the hydrology of the landscape, redesigned Chinese Path in what is now the Explorers Garden, and redesigned the summit of Peters Hill.
In recent years as Senior Research Scientist, Peter has turned his attention to the study of adaptive plants in urban environments. In addition to teaching Harvard students on this topic at the Graduate School of Design, he championed the establishment of the Arboretum’s Bussey Brook Meadow as a preserve for the long-term study of urban ecology and organismic succession in disturbed landscapes. His 2010 book Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide is considered a seminal work in the study of emergent vegetation, providing an objective reassessment of the critical role that naturally-occurring plants play in the health and ecological cycling of urban environments.
