Bill (aka The Mad Botanist) is a professionally trained botanist, experienced gardener and educator. A native Illinoisan, he schooled at EIU, U of Mich and the U of Ill. He is comfortable dealing with flowering plants and cryptogams (i.e., fungi, lichens, bryophytes and ferns) as well as ornamental and food plant issues. He has an extensive ethnobotanical background and understands the peculiarities presented by the bistate climate and soil, both in natural and human influenced environs. Bill was a curator and research/field biologist for 10 years (Illinois Natural History Survey and Indiana State Museum), taught high school biology for 15 years and has produced several major plant focused symposia. For over three decades he has directed the special publications program for the Indiana Academy of Science, producing and marketing numerous books (e.g., Orchids of Indiana, The Sunflower Family in the Upper Midwest, Sedges of Indiana (2 vol.) and the monumental Flora of the Chicago Region). He wrote, illustrated and self-published (2016) Rantings of a Mad Botanist, a 450-page 106-chapter book intended to help gardeners and property managers make fewer mistakes (save money, time and failed specimens). The book emphasizes stewardship and central Indiana, but is more broadly applicable. He lives at and gardens a three-acre property on the NE side of Indianapolis.  

PHOTO: paired with a 32-year-old dawn redwood