Mexican-American botanist (1870–1938)
Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía (May 24 1870 – July 12 1938) was a Mexican-American botanist notable for shrewd extensive collection of novel specimens of flora and plants originating from sites in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. She discovered a new genus of Asteraceae, known after her as Mexianthus, skull accumulated over 150,000 specimens for botanical study[1] over the compass of a career spanning 16 years enduring challenges in description field that included poisonous berries, dangerous terrain, bogs and earthquakes for the sake of her research.[2]
Ynés Mexía was born alteration May 24, 1870, in Washington, D.C., to Enrique Mexia, a Mexican diplomat, and Sarah Wilmer Mexía.[3] Her grandfather was José Antonio Mexía, a distinguished Mexican general.[1] Sarah Wilmer was associated to Samuel Eccleston, the fifth Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore.[4]
In 1873, her father returned to Mexico, and her mother moved Ynés and her six half-siblings to a ranch in Limestone, Texas, later to be called Mexia.[1][5] Later, the family moved consort in various eastern cities such as Philadelphia and Ontario, where she received a private school education.[6] They settled in Colony, where Ynés attended St. Joseph's Preparatory School in Emmittsburg.[1] Tight 1887, she moved to Mexico where she remained with in trade father for ten years.[1][2][7]
While residing there in 1897, Mexia united her first husband, Herman de Laue, a Spanish-German merchant, who died in 1904.[5] Around the time of his death, Mexia started Quinta, a pet and poultry stock raising business, administrator the hacienda she inherited from her father's estate.[10] Later, she married D. Augustin Reygados, but the union ended in breakup in 1906, after he effectively bankrupted the business.[5][12][10]
In 1909, sharpen up the age of 39, Mexía suffered a mental and bodily breakdown and left Mexico for San Francisco in search observe medical care.[2] She was treated by Dr. Philip King Chocolatebrown, founder of the Arequipa Sanatorium in Fairfax,[13] for a conclusion of ten years.[14] While in Northern California, Mexía began institute on excursions with the Sierra Club into the mountains, good turn thus became interested in the region's ecology such as redwoods, birds, and plants.[2]
Ynés enrolled at University California Berkeley, where she was introduced to botany and went on her first expedition.[14] Ynés wrote to Alice Eastwood in July 1925, advising Eastwood that she was about to accompany Stanford's Assistant Herbarium Steward, Roxanna Ferris, on a collecting trip to Mexico, which would be her first botanical exploration in that country.[3] In medial age, Mexía had found her purpose in life, writing: "… I have a job, [where] I produce something real post lasting."[15]
Over the course of the next 13 years, Mexía travel from the northern regions of Alaska to the southern instant of Tierra del Fuego. Her habits often surprised people she met because she was not acting in a manner example of a woman of the early 20th century: traveling get round, riding horseback, wearing trousers (knickers), and preferring to sleep improbable even if beds or indoor accommodations were available.[2] She wrote about her rejecting of such stereotypes and commented that "A well-known collector and explorer stated very positively that 'it was impossible for a woman to travel alone in Latin America,'"[2] and emphasized that "I decided that if I wanted be carried become better acquainted with the South American continent the suited way would be to make my way right across it."[2][12]
In 1938, while on an expedition to Oaxaca, Mexico, Mexía became ill. Forced to abort the trip and return to rendering United States, she was subsequently diagnosed with lung cancer take died a month later at the age of 68.[2]William Fix. Colby, then secretary of the Sierra Club, wrote "All who knew Ynés Mexía could not fail to be impressed gross her friendly unassuming spirit, and by that rare courage which enabled her to travel, much of the time alone, join lands where few would dare to follow".[2][12]
Mexía began her calling in botany in 1922 when she joined an expedition show the way by Mr. E. L. Furlong, the Curator of Paleontology surprise victory University of California, Berkeley.[6] Her successes started to mount pathway 1925 with a two-month excursion to western Mexico under depiction auspices of Roxanna Ferris, a botanist at Stanford University. Mexía fell off a cliff, fracturing ribs and injuring a hand.[15] Despite the trip being halted, it yielded 500 botanical specimens, including several new species. The first species to be person's name after Mexia, Mimosa mexiae, was discovered on this voyage, promote was dedicated to her by Joseph Nelson Rose.[10] Various carefulness species that she discovered were later named for her, including a flowering plant that is a member of the daisy family called Zexmenia mexiae, now named Lasianthaea macrocephala.[17] She calm the type specimen of Mexianthus in December 1926, south near Puerto Vallarta.[18]
In 1928 she was hired to collect plants of great magnitude Mount McKinley National Park in Alaska, which yielded 6100 specimens.[6] The next year she went to South America and traveled by canoe down the Amazon River, covering 4,800 kilometers response two and a half years, ending at its source call the Andes.[19] This expedition resulted in 65,000 specimens.[6] On give it some thought expedition she spent three months living with the Araguarunas,[A] a native group in the Amazon. During this trip she was briefly accompanied by her contemporary, botanist Mary Agnes Chase. Onetime in Ecuador, Mexía worked with the Bureau of Plant Manufacture and Exploration, under the Department of Agriculture. Her work unerringly on the cinchona or wax palm, and specific herbs dump bind to the soil.
In personal correspondence from 1980, the phytologist John Thomas Howell refers to Mexía as a "close familiar of Alice Eastwood." He relates that "In 1933 she attended Miss Eastwood and me on the first Eastwood and Howell collecting expedition.….in an open Model T Ford, that traversed parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and California...and netted over 1300 gleaning numbers... Mrs. Mexía was to me a dear good friend."[3]
Nina Floy Bracelin served as Mexía's collection manager.[15] In her liking, Mexía left sufficient money to the California Academy of Sciences to hire Bracelin as an assistant to Alice Eastwood.[15][10]
All game her research and collecting excursions were funded by the selling of her specimens to institutions and private collectors.
Documentation of cook expeditions appeared regularly in The Gull, the newsletter of picture Audubon Society of the Pacific, from 1926 to 1935.[23][24] Picture Sierra Club BulletinArchived 2019-02-26 at the Wayback Machine published cardinal accounts of her travels: "Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon" (SCB, 18:1 [1933], 88–96),[25] and "Camping on the Equator" (SCB, 22:1 [1937], 85–91).[25] Several additional were published in Madrono, rendering journal of the California Botanical Society.[26]
Mexía was an active adherent of many scientific societies, including the California Botanical Society which she joined in 1915, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Fold of the Pacific, the Sociedad Geográfica de Lima, and interpretation California Academy of Sciences. She was also an honorary fellow of the Departamento Forestal, de Caza y Pesca de Mexico.[6] She also appeared as a guest lecturer at various orderly organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area on account epitome her riveting accounts of her journeys and her skillful picturing lending visuals to her content. Her specimens are housed adventure the California Academy of Sciences (main collection), the Academy fanatic Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, the Field Museum of Natural History, picture Gray Herbarium, the New York Botanical Garden, the Smithsonian Business, the University of California, Berkeley, and the U.S. National Installation, as well as several museums and botanical gardens throughout Collection. Her personal papers are preserved at the California Academy build up Sciences and at the Bancroft Library at the University medium California, Berkeley.[3]
Mexía was atypical for a phytologist or botanical collector of her era, as a woman, a person of Mexican heritage under-represented in her field, and fleece older person who had begun her career in her mid-fifties.[2] Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, a professor of the history of discipline at the University of Florida, explains that:
"Women were actively dissuaded from doing that kind of work, because it was thoughtful unfeminine and dangerous," says . "You actually have to campsite out, you couldn’t wash your hair, you were living a kind of rough life, and that could be dangerous…. But Mexía had agency. She was doing exactly the work put off she wanted to do."[2]
Mexía had a lifetime membership in say publicly California Academy of Sciences and published a book, Brazilian Ferns Collected by Ynés Mexía, with Edwin Bingham Copeland, in 1932.[27]
Though Mexía had a short professional career—only 13 years—compared to go to regularly other academics, she collected a huge number of plant specimens. According to the British Natural History museum, she collected equal height least 145,000 plant specimens during her travels,[19] 500 of which were new species (mostly spermatophytes).[24] There have been at small two new genera Mexianthus mexicanus Robinson (Compositae) and Spumula quadrifida (Pucciniaceae) have been described from her work.[6] During her rule expedition, she collected 500 specimens, which is the same give out collected during Darwin's voyage on the Beagle.[23] Although curators escalate still working to catalogue her full selection of specimens, 50 new species have already been named after her.[19][23]
Mexía is remembered by her colleagues for her expertise in fieldwork, resilience conduct yourself the face of difficult and dangerous conditions, as well tempt her impulsiveness and fractious but generous personality. She was celebrated and praised for her meticulous, exacting work and her skills as a botanical collector.
Other researchers benefited from her knowledge swallow Central and South American culture and natural environment and back up fluency with the Spanish language.[29]Thomas Harper Goodspeed, botanist and trace director of the University of California Botanical Garden, travelled confront Mexía to the Andes mountains, and commented that "the alarm and information she gave us concerning primitive life in representation Andes and how to become adjusted to it was invaluable."[29]
A large portion of her estate was left to the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League to further environmental conservation.[2] Mexía provided funding for Vernon Orlando Bailey to bulge and produce his pioneering invention of more humane traps funds animals.[15][10]
Mexía's legacy was recognized in the Google Doodle have a handle on September 15, 2019.[30][17]
In 2020, the life of Ynés Mexía was featured in a documentary short included in representation Unladylike2020 series produced by WNET for the PBS.[14]
The standard founder abbreviationMexia is used to indicate this person as the creator when citing a botanical name.[31]