Dr. Garrett Crow

Dr. Garrett Crow will be teaching Field Botany during Summer Session I. He has spent 11 summers at Au Sable, both as a student and later as ASI faculty teaching Plant Taxonomy, Field Botany, and Research Methods. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at Calvin University and curator of the Calvin Herbarium, working with Dr. Dave Warners on floristic research.

After receiving a B.A. from Taylor University, Garrett earned a M.S. and Ph.D. in botany at Michigan State University. He spent his entire career teaching botany 33 years at the University of New Hampshire, Director of the Herbarium, and last 6 years as Department Chair. His main interests are biodiversity and phytogeography in the broad sense and is a specialist on aquatic plants of both temperate and tropics regions. He co-authored (with C. B. Hellquist) Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Northeastern North America. He has worked in Costa Rica on tropical aquatic plants and during a Fulbright Fellowship 1999–2000 at Univ. Nacional de C. R. and Inst. Nacional Biodiversidad taught “Plantas acuáticus tropicales,” and published a bilingual field guide (with keys, descriptions and color plates) Plantas acuáticas del Parque Nacional Palo Verde y el valle del río Tempisque, Costa Rica. Additionally he has written up aquatic families for the Manual de Plantas de Costa Rica. His field research has allowed him to travel widely both in temperate and neotropical regions—particularly Costa Rica and Bolivia––as well as the Crimea, Moldova, Black Sea region of Russia and central Siberia, focusing on diversity of aquatic plants.

Having returned to Michigan upon retirement, he stays active botanically as Adjunct Research Botanist at MSU Herbarium and has written up the bladderworts (Utricularia) and butterworts (Pinguicula) for Flora North America North of Mexico, and as Visiting Scholar in Biology, Calvin University, where he is partnering with Prof. Dave Warners on a fascinating historical project: “A Field-based Retrospective Assessment of Emma J. Cole’s Grand Rapids Flora After 100+ Years of ‘Progress,’ rediscovering Emma Cole’s collecting sites and comparing the flora of her day with that of the Greater Grand Rapids Area” today.