Formerly a forest service ecologist, range manager, and forester, Wayne Phillips is now devoted full time to teaching and writing about the flora of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains. He has taught botany/wildflower classes at the Yellowstone Institute since 1982. His teaching experience also includes botany classes as a faculty affiliate at the University of Montana, Montana State University–Northern and the University of Great Falls. He is currently the president of the Montana Native Plant Society and the author of Northern Rocky Mountain Wildflowers (FalconGuides). His hobbies include ethnobotany, herbalism, wildflower photography, canoeing, and mountaineering. Wayne's current, on-going botanical studies include collecting and photographing all of the plant species that were collected and described by Meriwether Lewis in 1804–1806. He is contributing this collection to the Lewis and Clark Expedition Interpretive Center near his home in Great Falls, Montana.