 He studied at several Southern schools, including Alabama Polytechnic Institute (B.S., 1891), and at Harvard, Cornell (Ph.D., 1898), and in Germany, Italy, and France.As a specialist in botany, he held various positions in experiment stations and colleges until 1901, when he was appointed physiologist in the Bureau of Plant Industry, United States Department of Agriculture, for which he wrote bulletins.He was professor of botany at the University of Missouri from 1902 to 1907 and thereafter held the chair of plant physiology at Cornell.