Dr
Chris Stapleton has 32 years experience as a bamboo specialist. He holds an honours degree in Forestry from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, and a PhD in bamboo taxonomy. As well as working on bamboo propagation and establishment for bilateral and multilateral development projects in Nepal and Bhutan with VSO and ODA, he has also worked for western botanic gardens, Edinburgh & Kew in the UK, and as a contractor for Missouri Botanical Garden in the US. He spent 8 years on the staff of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he undertook research into bamboo systematics and nomenclature, reorganizing the herbarium collections of dried bamboo specimens and revising many of the names on the living collections. He has published a substantial number of papers and books, including co-authorship of the bamboo account for the Flora of China. He has undertaken extensive collaborative fieldwork with local botanists in the Himalayas and China to further biodiversity knowledge, a by-product of which has been the introduction of some interesting bamboos to western horticulture.
He has lectured on bamboos in the US, and has served on the Board of Directors of the American Bamboo Society as International Director. He is also editor of the ABS Species List, which standardises names for bamboos in cultivation. He is an Honorary Life Member of the American Bamboo Society, and Life Member of the International Dendrology Society, and was an Honorary Research Associate of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He lives in the Chiltern Hills of S England.
Feel free to Contact for identification and consultancy services, which are undertaken on a non-profit basis to support the expansion of this website, and to further research & education in bamboo biodiversity and conservation.
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