Education
Born in Alliance, Ohio, Swallen graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University (Bachelor of Arts 1924) and Kansas State Agricultural College (Mississippi 1925).
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He spent two summers at the Michigan University Biological Station, then in 1925, he started as a botanist at the United States Department of Agriculture, serving under the United States Department of Agriculture"s chief agrostologist A. South. Hitchcock and after Hitchcock"s sudden death in 1935, Agnes Chase. Swallen practiced botany in California in 1927, and from the southwest United States to Yucatan, Mexico, in 1928, 1931 and 1932. In 1936, he published on the grasses of Honduras and Peten, Guatemala, and was promoted to associate botanist.
From 1943 to 1945, he served in Brazil as agricultural production officer in the United States Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs.
In 1947, he became the curator of the Division of Grasses at the Smithsonian Institution and chaired the Botany Department from 1950 until his retirement in 1965. In retirement he lived in Florida, Maryland, and Ohio.
In 1954 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree by Ohio Wesleyan University. The genus Swallenia for Eureka Valley Dune Grass, endemic to Inyo County, California, commemorates his name.
