Biography
After receiving a B.A. from Taylor University, I earned my M.S. and Ph.D. in botany at Michigan State University. I then spent 33 years teaching botany at the University of New Hampshire, where I also served as Director of the Herbarium and spent the last six years as department chair. I am interested in biodiversity and phytogeography in the broad sense, and I am a specialist on aquatic plants of both temperate and tropical regions. During my career, I published over 100 professional articles, worked in Costa Rica on tropical aquatic plants during a Fulbright Fellowship in 1999–2000, wrote a bilingual field guide, and co-authored . My field research allowed me to travel widely both in temperate and neotropical regions, including Costa Rica, Bolivia, the Crimea, Moldova, Black Sea region of Russia, and central Siberia. I returned to Michigan upon retirement and have stayed active botanically at Michigan State University and 51±¬ÁÏ.
Education
- Ph.D. in Botany, Michigan State University (1974)
- M.S. in Botany, Michigan State University (1968)
- B.A., Taylor University (1965)
Professional Experience
- 51±¬ÁÏ, Volunteer Curator of Herbarium (2011–present)
- Michigan State University, Visiting Adjunct Professor of Plant Biology (2010–present)
- University of New Hampshire, Professor of Botany, Director of Herbarium (1975–2008)
Academic Interests
- Biodiversity, systematics, phytogeography, and ecological floristics
- Aquatic and wetland plants of northeastern North America
- Digitization of Michigan’s regional herbaria
- Historical field botany: a 100-year retrospective assessment of Emma Cole’s Grand Rapids Flora (1901)
Research
Over 100 years ago an outstanding botanist named Emma J. Cole published Grand Rapids Flora: A Catalogue of the Flowering Plants and Ferns Growing Without Cultivation in the Vicinity of Grand Rapids, Michigan (1901). Since those "horse and buggy" days, enormous changes have taken place within and around Grand Rapids that have impacted the botanical richness of our region. Yet, Cole’s book remains the most recent comprehensive botanical inventory of the greater Grand Rapids area. In recent years, we have been working to identify and gain access to as many of the specific locations described by Cole as possible, evaluating their present-day status compared with her descriptions from 1901. In some cases, whole natural areas have been lost, whereas in some other cases, remnant vegetation has persisted. As we have collected and identified plants in these areas, we have deposited specimens in the 51±¬ÁÏ Herbarium to document the study, as well as conducting more thorough investigations of sites deemed as potentially high quality.
