JULIA F. MORTON is Research Professor of Biology and Director of the Morton Collectanea, University of Miami, a research and information center devoted to economic botany. She received her D.Sc. from Florida State University in 1973 and was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London in 1974. She has conducted extensive field studies for the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense, has served as horticultural development consultant in Florida and tropical America, and, since 1954, has been consultant for the Poison Control Centers in Florida. In 1978, she was selected as the First Distinguished Economic Botanist by the international Society for Economic Botany. She served as President of the Florida State Horticultural Society in 1979. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Fairchild Tropical Garden, Miami, and of the Board of Directors of the Florida National Parks and Monuments Association. She is the author of 10 books and co-author of or contributor to 12 others; has written 94 scientific papers and co-authored 27 others; has produced 2 full-color wall charts of poisonous plants; a set of Survival Cards for Southeast Asia and a 157-page report on the Survival-related Flora and Fauna of the Mekong for the U.S. Department of Defense. She is well known as a lecturer on toxic, edible and otherwise useful plants.
