As a scientific illustrator with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Joel Floyd drew images of invasive plants and other pests.

Now retired, he’s doing the same for another native ecosystem that’s being displaced: the old businesses and buildings of the Route 1 corridor.

The University Park resident began taking photographs of dilapidated buildings when he moved to the area from Arizona 18 years ago. He’s now using some of those photos to make paintings.

“I try to capture in paint the essence of their previous state of decay and succumbing to nature before obliteration or transformation into something else. Some of these buildings’ past ‘glories’ may show through in their last gasps,” he writes.

An exhibit of Floyd’s paintings, called “Roadside’s Last Gasps,” is now on display through April at the Maryland Milestones Heritage Center at 4318 Gallatin St. in Hyattsville.

The subjects include the S&J Bar in Riverdale Park, now home to the Riviera Tapas restaurant; the Starlight Inn, a notorious strip club in College Park in the 1980s; and the Quality Inn, an aging hotel in College Park torn down to make way for new apartments and retail.

Most of the paintings, which include watercolors and oil on canvas, are for sale, with prices ranging from $975 to $2,800.

One of Floyd’s other recent exhibits “Artists at Work”, was displayed at the Smithsonian’s S. Dillion Ripley Center last year in D.C.