1981, Reveal and Norlyn James Bodkin, then professor of Botany at James Madison University, identified a new lily variety, the first new plant discovery along the eastern U.S. seaboard since the 1940s. They named the new variety of Virginia Wake Robin Trillium pusillum var. monticulum (Shenandoah Wake Robin). In 1978, Reveal married his University of Maryland colleague, the botanist C. Rose Broome (later with the Agricultural Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture). They collaborated on many research projects, most notably the botanical studies of colonial Maryland and explorations in Mexico that identified two new plant varieties. Reveal helped document the flora of Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic and assisted in Broome's 1979 publication of the first checklist of Rare and Endangered Vascular Plant Species in Maryland. In 1992, Reveal's illustrated Gentle Conquest: The Botanical Discovery of North America was published. Gentle Conquest encompasses the history of botanical exploration in the New World from the first settlement to the end of the Western frontier. Reveal retired from the Botany Department at the University of Maryland in 1999, but remained active, holding emeritus appointments including Honorary Curator of the New York Botanical Garden (2003-2015) and Adjunct Professor at Cornell University (2007-2015), working on the Intermountain Flora project and collecting plant specimens throughout several Western U.S. states, including California, Colorado, and Nevada. He made numerous contributions to the website, Discovering Lewis & Clark. In 2009, Reveal received the North American Rock Garden Society's Edgar T. Wherry award for his contributions to the genus Eriogonum. Reveal died on January 9, 2015, in Ithaca, New York. Reveal system Reveal made major contributions to the systematic taxonomy of the flowering plants. in 1997 he published his own system of classification online in ten parts as lecture notes comparing the major systems in use at that time, but without accompanying rationale. Following this Reveal became an author with the consensus Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) on the APG II 2003 and APG III 2009 processes. Although this largely supplanted the earlier and competing systems, he collaborated with Robert Thorne on his system (2007), and subsequently continued to develop his own system. Legacy Reveal made major contributions to the systematics of Polygonaceae subfamily Eriogonoideae, and other families. For his many contributions to botany, seven species and one genus have been named in his honor (patronyms). Castilleja revealii N. H. Holmgren (Orobanchaceae) Eriogonum revealianum S. L. Welsh (=E. corymbosum