Jane Langdale is highly regarded internationally as an outstanding plant developmental geneticist and leader in this field. Her contributions to plant sciences have transformed our understanding of how plants initiate leaves, how leaves adapted to major evolutionary transitions and how those changes affect photosynthesis in land plants. She has elucidated mechanisms operating from organ inception and specification at the shoot apex, through patterning of distinct cell-types, to chloroplast biogenesis. Importantly, her research has been carried out in a comparative framework and has thus advanced our understanding of leaf development, not just in model flowering plant species but in species from all the major land plant lineages. Langdale has collaborations with Australian research groups in CISRO and the ANU and is a champion for diversity and mentoring the next generation of scientists.