Edward James Salisbury

Sir Edward James Salisbury FLS FRS CBE (16 April 1886 – 10 November 1978) was an English botanist, field naturalist, plant photographer, and ecologist. He was appointed Quain Professor of botany in 1929, awarded a Veitch Memorial Medal in 1936, and knighted in 1946.

Quotes

It is tempting to assume that the process of natural selection has brought about a nicety of adjustment between the seed output and mortality, and this presumption is implicit in most of the writings on this topic. If true, it involves as a necessary corollary that the potential reproductive capacity of a species is a measure of its susceptibility to natural mortality.
- The Reproductive Capacity of Plants: Studies in Quantitative Biology. George Bell. 1942. p. 2. (244 pages)

... the Sea Wheat Grass (Agropyron junceum) is extremely tolerant of sea water. It can grow quite well with as much as 1.5% of salt in the sand and will tolerate up to 6%. Moreover, it will endure quite prolonged inundation by a high tide.
- Downs & Dunes: Their Plant Life and Its Environment. George Bell & Sons. 1952. p. 211. ISBN 9780598807229. (328 pages)

All the British dandelions produce viable fruits without the necessity for fertilization (apomictic) so that, although they have all the advantages of dispersal associated with normal seed production (in this instance wind-dispersal of the parachute-bearing fruits), yet their reproduction is equivalent to vegetative propagation.
- Weeds & Aliens. volume 43 of The New naturalist; a survey of British natural history (2nd ed.). Collins. 1961. p. 192. (384 pages)

It was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the rich harvest of American shrubs really began to be garnered, though the Tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) had already introduced from there in 1663.
- The Living Garden; Or, The How and Why of Garden Life. London: George Bell & Sons. 1936. p. 130. (1st published in 1935)

From the woods of north-west America came that familiar evergreen shrub Mahonia pinnata, which in some gardens to-day is almost a weed; yet such was the enthusiasm with which it was first received that roots commanded a price of ten guineas each.
- p. 132

During his long period on the academic staff of University College Salisbury’s scientific reputation rose steadily with the publication of a succession of research papers in botanical and other journals and of several important books, including The reproductive capacity of plants (1942), and also through his frequent and much acclaimed lectures to a wide range of botanical and horticultural audiences. He was President of the British Ecological Society in 1928, Vice-President of the Linnean Society in 1928-9, and in 1933 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1937 he became President of Section K of the British Association and in 1939 was made C.B.E. Then in 1943 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, made vacant by the death of Sir Arthur Hill.
- Arthur Roy Clapham, (1980) . "Edward James Salisbury. 16 April 1886 – 10 November 1978". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 26: 502–526. DOI:10.1098/rsbm.1980.0014. (quote from p. 507)

An article in New Scientist in June 1959 described Sir Edward James Salisbury as a “prophet and propagandist of botany”. Inspired by the plants that grew wild in his native Hertfordshire, he became a pioneering ecologist, lecturer, author – The Living Garden (1935) was a bestseller – and, from 1943-56, director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He was also a keen photographer and a large collection of his glass plate negatives – natural landscapes and individual plant studies – was recently discovered in the Natural History Museum archives.
- Sean O'Hagan, (25 July 2017) "Review: Field Studies by Chrystel Lebas review – a photographic journey into the UK’s wild places". The Guardian. (See Chrystel Lebas.)

Encyclopedic article on Edward James Salisbury on Wikipedia
Rawlings, Emily M. (July 6, 2022). F is for Floras, Tag Archives: Salisbury Collection. Special Collections, University of Southampton.
Edward James Salisbury. Herbaria United, Botanical Society of the British Isles.