Michael Proctor (botanist)

Michael Charles Faraday Proctor PhD (21 January 1929 – 24 October 2017) was an English botanist and plant ecologist, lecturer, scientific author based at the University of Exeter.^[1]^[2]^[3] He retired from his post as Reader in Plant Ecology at Exeter University in 1994.^[4]

M.C.F. Proctor published more than 100 research papers,^[5] and was regarded as one of Britain's pre-eminent plant ecologists.^[6]^[7] In 1968 he revised and updated Arthur Tansley's book 'Britain's Green Mantle'.^[8] He was a contributing author to all of the five volumes of the definitive work on British Plant Communities, edited by J.Rodwell (1991-2000), and also wrote three books in the New Naturalist Series: two on pollination, and one on the vegetation of Britain and Ireland.

Academic career

Proctor studied botany, zoology and chemistry for his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University,^[9] then did research on rock-roses (Helianthemum).^[9] In 1956 he published a significant work on the bryophyte flora of Cambridgeshire, which embodied "the accumulation of Cambridgeshire bryophyte records begun by Prof. P.W. Richards in 1927".^[10] Proctor’s flora set out the history of bryophyte recording in the vice-county of Cambridgeshire and provided a guide to the main habitats.^[11] It was the first detailed account of the bryophytes of that county since 1820, when the third edition of Relhan’s Flora Cantabrigiensis was published.^[10]

Proctor's interest in insects and pollination ecology dated from his student days, shared with Peter Yeo at Cambridge, and with whom he remained a life-long friend.

Nature Conservancy in North Wales for two years,^[9] before joining the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Exeter in November 1956^[13] where he taught botany and ecology until retiring in September 1994.^[9] His main research interests have included distribution and ecophysiology of bryophytes,^[14] especially with reference to the Dartmoor oakwoods such as Wistman's Wood; the vegetation and water chemistry of blanket bogs and mires,^[14] plus the distribution, ecology and physiology of the filmy ferns, Hymenophyllum tunbrigense and H. wilsonii.^[14]

Proctor was editor of Watsonia, the journal of the then Botanical Society of the British Isles from April 1961 to July 1971.^[15]^[16]

Honours and recognition

Proctor was a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences^[9]^[17] as well as being an honorary member of the Hungarian Society for Plant Physiology.^[9]^[18] He was also a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society,^[9]^[19] a founder member of the Devon Wildlife Trust,^[9] and between 1969 and 1981 he was a trustee of Paignton Zoo, and was reappointed trustee again in 1991.^[9]

His contribution to botany and to the study of

Whitebeam (Sorbus spp) in particular is honoured in the naming of a species of hybrid Rowan, of which only one plant is known to exist in the wild.^[20] Proctor’s Rowan (Sorbus x proctoris T.Rich) has Rowan (Sorbus aucuparia L.) and Sichuan Rowan (S. scalaris Koehne) as its parents and was discovered in the Avon Gorge.^[20]

The standard author abbreviation M.Proctor is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.^[21]