He was also curator of the museum in the Botany Department.
The gardens have been managed by the Department of Botany since 1985.
The course runs under the Department of Botany with well provided teaching faculty.
Here he headed up a newly created Department of Botany.
It was an outpost of the University's botany department.
Between 1987 and 1993 he was head of the Department of Botany.
"Perhaps it's time for us to move out of the botany department and into the zoology department."
Wells headed the Botany Department from 1919 to 1949 and continued teaching until his retirement in 1954.
There is a medicinal plant garden maintained by the Department of Botany.
He served as head of the botany department at University of Iowa from 1914 to 1919.