Michael Proctor

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

M.C.F. Proctor published more than 100 research papers, and was regarded as one of Britain's pre-eminent plant ecologists. In 1968 he revised and updated Arthur Tansley's book 'Britain's Green Mantle'. 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, then did research on rock-roses (Helianthemum). Proctor’s flora set out the history of bryophyte recording in the vice-county of Cambridgeshire and provided a guide to the main habitats. 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. where he taught botany and ecology until retiring in September 1994.

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

Honours and recognition Proctor was a foreign member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences as well as being an honorary member of the Hungarian Society for Plant Physiology. He was also a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, a founder member of the Devon Wildlife Trust, 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.

Selected publications