Peter Del Tredici

Who is Peter Del Tredici?

Peter Del Tredici is an American botanist and author. He is a senior research scientist at Arnold Arboretum and a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He was appointed curator of the Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection in 1982 and was editor of the journal Arnoldia from 1989 to 1992.

Del Tredici, a native Californian, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Zoology from University of California, Berkeley in 1968 and a Master of Arts in Biology from the University of Oregon in 1968, after which he moved to Boston where he established his career and earned his doctorate in Biology from Boston University in 1991. His thesis adviser was Richard Primack and his thesis topic was "The Evolution and Natural History of Ginkgo biloba L.". Research on this project extended over a three year period and involved travel to eastern China and to South Carolina.

Del Tredici is an advocate of a "radically practical" approach to urban plant life, holding that what some people see as a collection of undesirable plants should be viewed as a valuable ecosystem unique to the hostile habitat of the city, and he prefers the term "spontaneous" over "invasive" in describing these flora. Del Tredici is the author of Wild Urban Plants of the Northeast: A Field Guide, which catalogs and describes the many species of urban wildflowers, weeds, and other plants that flourish without human support, and in which he makes the case that they can be beneficial to the quality of urban life.