Floyd Swink

Floyd Allen Swink (1921-2000) was an American botanist, teacher of natural history, and author of several floras of the Chicago region.

[3] While attending York High School, he picked up an interest in local botany and explored natural areas in the Chicago region with his brother.

[5][3] He was known for his showmanship and eidetic memory, with tricks 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.

"[8] 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.

In 1960, he joined The Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois as the director of education, teaching botany and natural history.

At the request of Northern Illinois University's Dr. Herbert Lamp, in 1965 Swink typed up a list of plants from M. L. Fernald's 8th edition of Gray's Manual that included only those species found in the Chicago area.

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.

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.

He worked with Robert Betz to preserve Santa Fe Prairie in Hodgkins, Illinois,[2] Sagawau Canyon, a unique natural feature near Lemont, IL,[17] and also advocated for the restoration of the Indiana Dunes.