British botanist Ray Harley is an honorary research fellow at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where his work focuses on Lamiaceae systematics. Formerly head of the South American section of the herbarium, he is an expert on neotropical biodiversity and the flora of Bahia and north-east Brazil, as well as British Lamiaceae, especially Mentha species. Since 1996 he has occupied a visiting professorship in Brazil where he continues to collect herbarium material and teach taxonomy. He was a major collaborator on Kubitzki's Families and Genera of Flowering Plants (2004). With A.M. Giulietti and others he published an important paper, "Biodiversity and conservation of plants in Brazil" in 2005 (in Conservation Biology). His field studies have also been used to produce two illustrated volumes on the plants of the Chapada Diamantina featuring useful plants and a series of mountain trails. Harley most recent work includes a revision of Hyptidinae for Flora Neotropica and the section on the genus Hyptis for the Flora of São Paulo and Flora Mesoamericana.
