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Council of Heads of Australasian Herbaria |
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Born on 11 June 1959 in Ljungby, Sweden.
Swedish botanist with a Ph.D. from Uppsala University in 1995. His thesis dealt with the amphi-Pacific genus Abrotanella (Asteraceae) with species in Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Auckland and Campbell Islands, Tierra del Fuego, and the Juan Fernandez Islands. He collected plants during his postdoc in the latter archipelago in 1996, a work continued at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the University of British Columbia.
After being appointed to Assistant Professorships at Lund University (1998) and Stockholm University (1999), he obtained a Research position at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in 2002 where he remained until he retired in April 2025.
Swenson's interest in historical biogeography led to some important publications such as that the Gondwanan genus Nothofagus arrived to areas through dispersal, not vicariance. In 2002, he embarked on the taxonomy, systematics, and biogeography on the tropical plant family Sapotaceae, a group of plants he worked on until he retired.
Swenson has collected plants in several areas, including Tasmania and New Zealand, Costa Rica, Hawaii, Madagascar, South Africa and Vietnam, but mainly in New Caledonia. The main collection is deposited at Swedish Museum of Natural History (S), with many duplicates sent to Brisbane (BRI), Canberra (CANB) and Melbourne (MEL) herbaria.
His Tasmanian collections were made in 1994.
The endemic New Caledonian shrub Planchonella ulfii Munzinger is named in his honour.
Source: Pers.Comm. Ulf Swenson (2025)
Portrait Photo: 2025, M.Fagg
Data from 301 specimens