Peter Ashton is professor emeritus in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, where he served as director of the Arnold Arboretum. He is also an honorary research associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Ashton has published more than 260 research papers and books and has field experience in the forests of all but three nations in the Asian tropics. He is a Japan Prize laureate and recipient of many other awards, including the Linnean Medal, the David Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration, and the UNESCO Sultan Qaboos Prize for Environmental Preservation.