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Dr. Floyd Allen Swink (1921-2000) was an American botanist, teacher of natural history, and author of several
floras Flora (: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. The corresponding term for animals is ''fauna'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Sometimes b ...
of the Chicago region.


Early life

Floyd Swink was born in
Villa Park, Illinois Villa Park is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States, within the Chicago metropolitan area. The population as of the 2020 Census is 21,113. Villa Park is a western suburb of Chicago. History When Ovaltine established its facto ...
in 1921. While attending York High School, he picked up an interest in local botany and explored natural areas in the Chicago region with his brother. As a young man, he worked as a professional and competitive speed typist, achieving speeds of 190 words per minute and demonstrating typewriters for L.C. Smith and Corona Typewriter Company in downtown Chicago. His speed was impressive, but his showmanship and
eidetic memory Eidetic memory ( ; more commonly called photographic memory or total recall) is the ability to recall an image from memory with high precision—at least for a brief period of time—after seeing it only onceThe terms ''eidetic memory'' and ''pho ...
more so, such as keeping nickels perched on his knuckles, typing the capitals of the states in alphabetical order while he was reading a book upside down." He served as a typist in the U.S. Navy in a Chicago recruiting station between 1942 and 1945.


Careers


Early botanical studies

Floyd Swink spent most of his career teaching plant and animal identification and creating works that allowed others to teach themselves with the help of a book. He studied plants largely on his own throughout his early 20s, but in 1946 he began to study intently under
Julian Steyermark Julian Alfred Steyermark (January 27, 1909 – October 15, 1988) was a Venezuelan American botanist. His focus was on New World vegetation, and he specialized in the family Rubiaceae. Life and work Julian Alfred Steyermark was born in St. Louis, ...
, a researcher and botanical curator at the
Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...
. The two spent weekends collecting plants in Missouri as part of Steyermark's research there, culminating in his publishing of ''Flora of Missouri'' in 1963. Swink struck up a correspondence with noted Indiana botanist Charles Deam, author of ''Flora of Indiana'', in 1947. He quickly won Deam's respect as a rising young botanist. They eventually met for a botanical outing with two other Indiana botanists. Deam wrote to Swink shortly after the trip saying, "no Prof. of the Chicago U. can equal you. Few can."


Poisonous plants

Between 1949 and 1955, Swink was a professor of botany, zoology, pharmacognosy, and entomology as well as a part-time student at the College of Pharmacy of the
University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois s ...
. He was nationally-recognized as an authority on poisonous plants, serving as an expert consultant to hospitals around the country in cases of poisoning and potentially poisonous plant identification.


''Plants of the Chicago Region''

Swink published his first book in 1953: ''A guide to the wild flowering plants of the Chicago region''. Between 1957 and 1960, he was employed as a naturalist with the
Forest Preserve District of Cook County The Forest Preserve District of Cook County is a governmental commission in Cook County, Illinois, that owns and manages a network of open spaces, containing forest, prairie, wetland, streams, and lakes, that are mostly set aside as natural area ...
. In 1960, he joined The
Morton Arboretum The Morton Arboretum, in Lisle, Illinois, United States, is a public garden, and outdoor museum with a library, herbarium, and program in tree research including the Center for Tree Science. Its grounds, covering 1,700 acres (6.9 square kilometres ...
in
Lisle, Illinois Lisle ( ) is a village in DuPage County, Illinois, United States. The population was 22,390 at the 2010 census, and in 2019 the population was recorded to be 23,270. It is part of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Illinois Technology and Res ...
as the director of education, teaching botany and natural history. He became the arboretum’s
plant taxonomist Plant taxonomy is the science that finds, identifies, describes, classifies, and names plants. It is one of the main branches of taxonomy (the science that finds, describes, classifies, and names living things). Plant taxonomy is closely alli ...
in 1963. He continued to work for the Morton Arboretum for almost 40 years. Few and out-of-date botanical resources were available to Chicago area botanists in the 1960s. At the request of
Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a Public university, public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of ...
's Dr. Herbert Lamp, in 1965 Swink typed up a list of plants from
M. L. Fernald Merritt Lyndon Fernald (October 5, 1873 – September 22, 1950) was an American botanist. He was a respected scholar of the taxonomy and phytogeography of the vascular plant flora of temperate eastern North America. During his career, Fernald pub ...
's 8th edition of Gray's Manual that included only those species found in the Chicago area. It became known by naturalists as the "Lamp List." After several years fervently collecting plant specimens and county records throughout the region, Swink published ''Plants of the Chicago Region'' in 1969. Only 250 copies were printed and it quickly sold out. This regional flora compiled wild plant occurrences from counties in northeastern Illinois, southeastern Wisconsin, northern Indiana, and southwestern Michigan—an area delimited by what was considered a reasonable a day trip from Chicago. In contrast with other floras which were sometimes deemed "too recondite for the weekend botanist," the plants were sorted alphabetically by genus rather than in
phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
order and author citations were excluded, to the disapproval of some other contemporary botanists. ''Plants of the Chicago Region'' was also distinctive in providing lists of "associated" plant species for each entry, and with later editions rendering
non-native species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there ...
in italics while leaving native species non-italicized. These unique features of the flora reflected the nascent community of ecological restoration practitioners that grew out of the Chicago region in the mid-20th century. The lists of associate species have been widely referenced by regional restoration projects, including Stephen Packard's efforts to restore
savanna A savanna or savannah is a mixed woodland-grassland (i.e. grassy woodland) ecosystem characterised by the trees being sufficiently widely spaced so that the canopy does not close. The open canopy allows sufficient light to reach the ground to ...
s along the
North Branch of the Chicago River North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography. Etymology The word ''north'' is ...
. Swink continued work on this regional flora for several decades. The second edition was published in 1974. The third edition, co-authored with
Gerould Wilhelm Gerould S. Wilhelm (born 1948) is an American botanist and lichenologist. He is known as author of several floras of the Chicago Region and the development of the Floristic Quality Assessment methodology, a tool to assess the integrity of natu ...
, was published in 1979, and the fourth and final edition was published in 1994. The third edition of ''Plants of the Chicago Region'' was the first regional flora to include coefficients of conservatism for each plant species, following the
Floristic Quality Assessment Floristic Quality Assessment (FQA) is a tool used to assess an area's ecological integrity based on its plant species composition. Floristic Quality Assessment was originally developed in order to assess the likelihood that impacts to an area "woul ...
system originally conceived by Wilhelm in 1977 for
Kane County, Illinois Kane County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois. According to the 2010 census, it has a population of 515,269, making it the fifth-most populous county in Illinois. Its county seat is Geneva, and its largest city is Aurora. Kane County ...
.


Accolades

Swink was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1995 by
Western Illinois University Western Illinois University (WIU) is a public university in Macomb, Illinois. It was founded in 1899 as Western Illinois State Normal School. As the normal school grew, it became Western Illinois State Teachers College. History Western Illin ...
for the vast botanical and ornithological knowledge he had acquired by individual study, as well as his generosity in sharing that knowledge with others. Swink,
Robert Betz The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...
, and
Ray Schulenberg Ray may refer to: Fish * Ray (fish), any cartilaginous fish of the superorder Batoidea * Ray (fish fin anatomy), a bony or horny spine on a fin Science and mathematics * Ray (geometry), half of a line proceeding from an initial point * Ray (gra ...
—the "Prairie Triad"—were awarded the George B. Fell Award in 1996 for their work in the pioneering of prairie restoration in northern Illinois.


Legacy

Floyd Swink is known for his lasting contributions to botany through his several published works on the flora of the Chicago region. He was instrumental in securing the protection of numerous natural areas. He worked with Robert Betz to preserve Santa Fe Prairie in Hodgkins, Illinois, Sagawau Canyon, a unique natural feature near Lemont, IL, and also advocated for the restoration of the
Indiana Dunes Indiana Dunes National Park is a United States national park located in northwestern Indiana managed by the National Park Service. It was authorized by Congress in 1966 as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and was redesignated as the nation ...
. Swink's legacy of botanical study in the Chicago Region continues in those that he mentored, including the publishing of ''Flora of the Chicago Region: A Floristic and Ecological Synthesis'' by Gerould Wilhelm and
Laura Rericha Laura Rericha-Anchor is an American biologist with expertise in botany, ornithology, entomology, and ecology of the Midwestern United States. Career Largely self-taught since a young age, Rericha began as a naturalist with the Forest Preserves ...
in 2017. In 2016, Wilhelm and Rericha named the plant ''
Hypericum swinkianum ''Hypericum swinkianum'', known as Swink's St. John's wort, is a shrub in the St. John's wort family. It was named after Chicago Region botanist Floyd Swink (1921-2000). Description Swink's St. John's wort is a many-branched shrub up to high. ...
'' (Swink’s St. Johns wort) in his honor.


Publications

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Swink, Floyd 1921 births 2000 deaths Botanists active in North America 20th-century American botanists United States Navy personnel of World War II