[2] Tryon's first scientific paper was published in 1934 (at the age of 18) on the ferns in Chesterton, Indiana where his family's summer cottage was located.

in 1940, and Ph.D. in 1941[2] working with Merritt Lyndon Fernald and Charles Alfred Weatherby on ferns in the genera Pteridium and Doryopteris.

During World War II, he worked as a lab technician in the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1947, Tryon joined the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis as an associate professor of botany and became assistant curator in the herbarium of the Missouri Botanical Garden.

[2][4] At the New England Botanical Club, he was recording secretary from 1964 to 1968, associate editor of the Society's Journal Rhodora from 1961 to 1977, editor-in-chief from 1977 to 1981, vice-president from 1984 to 1986 and president from 1986 to 1988.