Tropical Ornamentals: A Guide

Art Whistler was born near Death Valley, California, to which he attributes his early love of plants and vegetation. After receiving a B.A. and an M.A. at the University of California, he served three years with the U.S. Peace Corps in Western Samoa where he taught high school biology. Resuming his schooling, he received a Ph.D. in Botany at the University of Hawai'i in 1979. Since then he has made numerous research trips to Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Tahiti, and elsewhere in the Pacific, working on the ethnobotany, medicinal plants, and flora of the islands. Currently he is a full time consultant with his company Isle Botanica, and prior to that, he was a botanist with the National Tropical Botanical Garden. Art has published several books on the botany of the Pacific Islands, including Polynesian Herbal Medicine (1992), and has written numerous scientific articles on medicinal plants, ethnobotany, and floristics of Polynesia. He is an adjunct associate professor at the Lyon Arboretum in Honolulu.