College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Iowa State University

From the heart

The book's cover lists Duane Isley as its author. While that's true, other botanists had a hand in completing the distinguished professor's life work.
Long before he became ill, Duane Isely had a heart-to-heart talk with a former student and current colleague.

"He told me that he didn't know if he had enough time to finish the book or not," remembers Stanley Welsh, professor of botany and range science at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Utah. "He asked me if I would finish it for him if that turned out to be the case.

"Then he went on to say that I wasn't that young any more either and he didn't know if I could finish it either."

Isely, who retired from Iowa State as a distinguished professor of botany in 1989, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the early '90s. He contacted Welsh again.

"Isely wrote me again and asked if I would undertake the project," Welsh said. There was no doubt in the Iowa State graduate's (Ph.D., '60) mind that he would say yes.

"He was a very good friend to me," Welsh said. "I just couldn't leave his book unfinished, a book that he had worked on for 50 years."

The Isely/Welsh friendship developed when the senior botanist served as the doctoral student's advisor. Even after Welsh graduated the two remained close. Welsh was invited to speak in Ames on numerous occasions and every other year for 20 years, he toured Utah with the Iowa State Botany Club.

So when Welsh received word from Isely's daughter that her father couldn't finish the book on legumes (bean family) he knew he couldn't leave his friend's and mentor's life work sitting on a shelf in the Iowa State herbarium.

Native and Naturalized Leguminosae (Fabaceae) of the United States was published by the BYU Press in 1998. The book is a summary revision of the legumes of the lower 48 U.S. states that Isely studied and collected (over 11,000 specimens) in his career. Descriptions are provided for all indigenous and commonly grown or introduced species.

Isely's finalized version of the manuscript consisted of looseleaf binders occupying more than 20 feet of shelf space in the ISU herbarium. Each species had been typed into a separate file. Welsh and his BYU students and colleagues transformed the files from an obsolete computer system before collating the separate files into a continuous manuscript.

The task of editing Isely's lifelong work fell to Deb Lewis, the curator of the herbarium. For two years Lewis, Welsh and others labored to bring Isely's dream to print at 1,000 pages.

"This really is Dr. Isely's work," Lewis said, "with all of his descriptions that he wrote."
Like Welsh, Lewis felt an obligation to finish the Isely book.

"I helped out, out of friendship and a fondness for Dr. Isely," she said. "There was a great sense of relief when the book was published. I'm really proud of it and extremely happy for Dr. Isely and his family."

A third person was actively involved in the project. Lois Tiffany, distinguished professor of botany, was instrumental in obtaining a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to print the book.

Welsh says that the publication remains as important today as it did when Isely started working on it 50 years ago.

"I was out on the Utah high plains this summer and I had the occasion to use the book to identify a legume species," he said. "The detail in the book is superb."