In 1971 he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society and that same year he joined the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), founding the RGBE Conifer Conservation Programme, now The International Conifer Conservation Programme.
[2] In 1976-77 he visited eastern Australia (Brisbane and Hobart) to work on pteridophytes (particularly Doodia, Cheilanthes and Adiantum) and also Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, The Philippines and New Zealand.
He joined Camborne School of Mines, University of Exeter, in 2004, teaching part-time on the Environmental Science and Technology degree in CSM, and also in Biosciences until 2008.
Some of his research in Cornwall involved experiments in regreening former extractive minerals sites, which he presented in 2017 in Parliament, with Professor Hylke Glass, also of CSM, as co-author.
[4] He had given a talk on BBC4 in 2008 in the series "Meetings with Remarkable Trees" on monkey puzzles (Araucaria araucana).