Patrick Heuret is a senior researcher from the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE) and is currently assigned to the UMR ‘Botany and Modelling of Plant Architecture and Vegetation (AMAP)’ in Montpellier, France. He is a field botanist at heart, and a specialist by training in plant development and architecture from the Hallé and Oldeman's school of thought. His skills and expertise revolve around the diversity, variability and plasticity of plants architecture, with a special focus on tropical plants and especially i) the analysis a posteriori of plant development using morpho-anatomical markers (dendrochronology), ii) the expression in space (morpho-anatomy) and time (phenology) of growth, branching, flowering and reiteration processes, iii) the partition rules and biomass allocation in trees according to ontogenetic stages and environmental constraints, and iv) plant architecture modeling using stochastic (Markovian models) or structural-functional model (FSPM).