Edward James Salisbury

"During his long period on the academic staff of 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 in 1928, Vice-President of the in 1928-9, and in 1933 he was elected a . In 1937 he became President of Section K of the and in 1939 was made Then in 1943 he was appointed to the Directorship of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, made vacant by the death of ."

"It was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that the rich harvest of American s really began to be garnered, though the had already introduced from there in 1663."

"An article in 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 , he became a pioneering ecologist, lecturer, author – The Living Garden (1935) was a bestseller – and, from 1943-56, director of the . 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 archives."

"... the is extremely tolerant of . 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."

"All the British s produce viable fruits without the necessity for fertilization () so that, although they have all the advantages of dispersal associated with normal seed production (in this instance of the parachute-bearing fruits), yet their reproduction is equivalent to vegetative propagation."

"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 of a species is a measure of its susceptibility to natural mortality."