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Christopher Roy Fraser-Jenkins was born in 1948 in a family steeped in botanical tradition, from his grandfather's famous Rhododendron-collection at Clyne Castle, Swansea, to his late father's well known horticultural garden at Newcastle House, Bridgend, where be was born.  He started his life-long, passionate interest in ferns aged 9 and after getting his B. Sc. honours degree at Leicester University in 1970 he studied for a Ph. D. there under Professor T.G. Tutin, also being invited by Professor Irene Manton and Dr. J.D. Lovis to their postgraduate course on fern-cytotaxonomy at Leeds University.  He then left his Ph.D. study to teach biology at Charterhouse School with the early pioneer-botanist in Nepal, Oleg Polunin, followed by at his old school, Radley.  From there he returned to full-time fern-research, with his own long-term programme, and with the help and collaboration of The Natural History Museum, London, and of his botanical colleague of many years, the Nobel Prize-winner, Professor Tadeus Reichstein of Basel, travelled extensively, collecting and studying in herbaria and the field throughout the world, particularly in west Asia (Turkey, ran and the Caucasus) and, from 1977, concentrating on the Indian subcontinent.  As a Nuffield Research Fellow at he Natural History Museum, from 1979 to 1981, he began to monograph the larger and more complex Indian fern-genera, particularly Dryopteris and Polystichum, followed by others.  he was awarded two Royal Society Scientific Exchange Fellowships to study in China and made many botanical visits throughout Asia, including 12 major study-and collecting-expeditions (of 9 months to two years) throughout the Sino-Himalayan region from Afghanistan and Pakistan, throughout India, also Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, to China, Taiwan, Japan and Java.  During the course of these journeys he has built up a major reference fern-herbarium of international importance containing some 32,000 numbers, on which he has drawn extensively in preparing over 90 detailed research-publications on fern-taxonomy and phytochemistry.  He has also collaborated extensively with botanists throughout the region.  In 1989 he was awarded the Indian Fern Society's Professor S.S. Bir gold medal for pteridological research.  He has lvied for 20 years in Kathmandu, Nepal, with his Nepalese wife and son, Jacob, and has collected extensively throughout the length and breadth of Nepal and N.E. India, studying pteridophytes along with local colleagues, as well as working with others on ferns of Kumaon, Bhutan and Bangladesh.  His previous major book, New Species Syndrome in Indian Pteridology and the Ferns of Nepal, a detailed nomenclatural study. was published in 1997.  In 2002 he was awarded a research-curatorship on South Asian ferns at the Natural History Museum, London, working there for a year on Don's Nepalese ferns, as well as the ferns of Tibet, a monograph of Himalayan Athyrioid ferns and Cheilanthes, Adiantum and Pteris (with Prof. S.C. Verma and Dr. T.G. Walker).  He is currently Nepal Coordinaor for the British volunteer-teacher group, i-to-i International, organising visiting volunteers, and studies ferns as his hobby and passionate interest.