Roger Spencer

Roger's primary role is to oversee the taxonomy of cultivated plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, which entails curating the Horticultural Reference Herbarium, describing and recording cultivated plants, and contributing to the International Cultivated Plant Code and international debate concerning the taxonomy of cultivated plants. Other recent work has included assisting with the development of an Australia-wide Weed Risk Assessment Procedure for garden plants and studying the relationship between sustainability and sustainable gardening.

Roger is also working on a 'Big History' approach to the idea of 'Plants, People & Planet: An Australian Perspective' with a view to developing the materials as a web resource. Three grand themes are being researched: a historical account of the way humans have changed the vegetation of Australia over time to produce the landscape we see today; an investigation of the cultural and scientific attitudes and beliefs that motivated this landscape change and how this has influenced the way that we perceive and manage the plant world around us today; and an examination of how social development in Australia has, through the interaction of social, economic, and environmental factors, influenced the current use of resources and future human sustainability.

Projects

• Taxonomy of cultivated plants
• Sustainability and sustainable gardening
• Garden escapes

Publications

Udovicic F. and Spencer R.D. (2012). New combinations in Callistemon (Myrtaceae). Muelleria 30, 23–25.

Cross, R. and Spencer, R. (2009). Sustainable gardens. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood.

Spencer, R. and Cross, R. (2008). The cultigen. In N. Groendijk-Wilders, C. Alexander, R.G. van den Berg and W.L.A. Hetterscheid (eds), ISHS Acta Horticulturae: V international symposium on the taxonomy of cultivated plants, pp. 163–167. International Society of Horticultural Science, Wageningen.

Virtue, J.G., Spencer, R.D., Weiss, J.E. and Reichard, S.E. (2008). Australia's Botanic Gardens weed risk assessment procedure. Plant Protection Quarterly 23(4), 166–178.

Spencer, R. and Cross, R. (2007). Plant names: a guide to botanical nomenclature, 3rd edn. CSIRO Publishing, Collingwood.

Full publication list