Christina Stapley has been researching historical uses of herbs for over forty years, an interest which sprang from research writing a novel set in the Elizabethan period. She is a retired phytotherapist and has grown more than three hundred herbs over the last thirty years. Christina now lives in Wiltshire and teaches at the School of Herbal Medicine in the Southwest of England. She is the author of The Tree Dispensary: The Uses, History, and Herbalism of Native European Trees.