BSS Council – Officers, Councillors, and Local Secretaries for 2025-26

President: Rich Wilson

Rich Wilson is currently a volunteer RBGE Garden Guide, and member of the Chilean Phenology Team, as well as occasionally teaching botanical photography. Rich has been and is the BSS Publicity Officer and Web Admin for BSS. He currently describes himself as the “caretaker” president until someone with more appropriate botanical qualifications is elected to the position. Rich is a retired managing consultant from IBM UK managing projects and programs in Western Europe and the UK. Previously, he retired from Sony America and Sony Europe. He has accepted the Board’s request to be President as we actively look for his replacement.

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Updated 5 july 2026

Officers	Names	Members of Council and Trustees of BSS
President	Rich Wilson	Yes
President-Elect	Prof Tom Meagher	Yes
Vice-President in	Vacant
General Secretary	Dr Rachel Thomas	Yes
Treasurer	David Adamson	Yes
Councillors with specific roles
Deputy Treasurer	Dr David Chamberlain	Yes
Membership Secretary	Fiona Maguire	Yes
Programme Secretary Deputy Programme Secretary	Dr Maria Chamberlain * Dr Nikolaos Maragkos *assisted by Dan Watson	Yes Yes No
Journal Editorial Committee	Prof John Grace	Yes
Urban Flora Convenor	Prof John Grace	Yes
Newsletter Co-editors	Prof Jonathan Silvertown and Dr Chris Jeffree	Yes Yes
BSBI Liaison	Dr Brian Ballinger	Yes
Publicity Officer	Rich Wilson	Yes
Publicity Coordinator	Hannah Connuck	No
Website administrator	Rich Wilson	Yes
Scottish Rainforest Alliance rep	Dr Liz Kungu	Yes
Cryptograms	Dr Liz Kungu	Yes
Alpine Secretary	Dan Watson	No
Mountain Plants Alliance	Prof Hamlyn Jones	Yes
Student Representative	Toby Cullen	Yes
Councillor without specific role
	Dr Richard Milne	Yes
Local secretaries
Aberdeen	Dr David Burslem	No
Tayside	Eleanor Stamp	No
Edinburgh (RBGE)	Dr Greg Kenicer	No
Edinburgh (KB)	Dr Richard Milne	No
Glasgow	Vacant
Inverness	Audrey Turner	No
Fife	Kevin Gaffney	No
Other
Journal Editor-in-Chief, Plant Ecology and Diversity	Dr Laszlo Nagy	No

Our Constitution was revised at the 2020 AGM, when the deadline for payment of membership fees (paragraph 16.7) was reduced from 26 weeks to 12 weeks. The Constitution was further revised at the 2021 AGM, when paragraphs 30.1 and 78.1 were added to allow Members’ and Council meetings to be held virtually. The documents are available at the bottom of this page.

All Enquiries concerning the Society should be addressed to: The BSS General Secretary: c/o Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR

E-mail: Contact us using the form here.