Biography

English-born botanist specialising in palms. Henderson has monographed more than 100 species of New World palms for Flora Neotropica and has been based at the New York Botanic Garden since 1987, where his most recent position is as Curator of the Institute of Systematic Botany. Born in Surrey, England, Andrew Henderson trained in horticulture at Kew before studying at Birkbeck College, University of London (1978-1982, alongside horticultural work). He gained his PhD from the City University of New York in 1987 after which he joined NYBG as Research Associate. He rose to become curator in 2001 as well as taking up teaching in palm systematics at City University of New York and tropical field botany at Yale University. From 2001 to 2004 Henderson was Editor of Flora Neotropica, and from 1995-1997 Editor-in-Chief of Brittonia.

His fieldwork concentrates on research for field guides to palms, most recently in Asia, with the aim of aiding conservation and sustainable use of economically important palms such as rattan. He has also investigated the reproductive biology of palms and carried out an extensive literature review on the ecology and evolution of palms. Henderson's first expedition to South America was in 1977 to Brazil, since which time he has returned almost annually to tropical countries on the continent and the Caribbean for 23 years. He also turned his attentions to Asian countries, visiting Burma (Myanmar), China, India, Papua New Guinea, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Vietnam several times from 2000 to 2008. He has authored several books including The Palms of the Amazon (1995) and a field guide to the palms of the Americas, co-authored with Colombian colleagues (also published 1995), while in 2008 he completed a field guide to the palms of Southern Asia. He is married to Flor Henderson with whom he has one daughter and a son.