Ynes Mexia

Ynes Mexia
Born May 24, 1870
Washington, D.C.
Died July 12, 1938(1938-07-12) (aged 68)
Citizenship Mexico, then United States
Nationality American
Fields Botanist
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley

Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía (May 24, 1870 – July 12, 1938) was a Mexican-American botanist known for her collection of novel plant specimens from areas of Mexico and South America. She discovered a new genus of Compositae and was arguably the most accomplished female plant collector of her time, travelling farther and collecting more specimens than any other.

Life and education

Ynés Mexía was likely born in Washington, D.C. on 24 May 1870 to her Mexican diplomat father, Enrique Mexia, who separated from her mother, Sarah Wilmer, in 1873. The marriage broke up when Ynés was three, and her father went back to Mexico City. Her mother took the children, including Ynés and six she had from a previous marriage,[1] moved to Limestone County on an eleven-league grant that became the site of present-day Mexia, Texas.[2][3]

Mexía spent most of her childhood in Texas and received her secondary education in private schools in Philadelphia and Ontario, Canada.[3] Her early education began at the age of 15, at Saint Joseph's Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland; after she finished there, she moved to Mexico City, where she lived at the family hacienda for 10 years and took care of her father, who died in 1896.[4][5] Initially she planned to become a nun, but her father's will stipulated that if she did she would be cut out of the inheritance she shared with a stepsister. She and her stepsister fought for the money with her father's mistress and a stepbrother.[1]

She married Herman de Laue, a Spanish-German merchant, in 1897 but the brief marriage ended upon his death in 1904.[4][6] Her second marriage, to D. Augustin Reygados, 16 years younger than she, was also short-lived. He badly mismanaged her poultry business while she received medical treatment in San Francisco, leading her to divorce him in 1908.[4][7][1] After her marriage to Reygados ended, she began a career as a social worker in San Francisco. In 1921, she matriculated at the University of California, Berkeley, motivated by trips with the Sierra Club, where a botany class sparked her interest in the field; she never received a degree.[4][8] She died in Berkeley on 12 July 1938 from lung cancer after falling ill on a collecting trip to Mexico.[7][3]

Career and legacy

Mexía began her career at the age of 55 with a 1925 trip to western Mexico under the tutelage of Roxanna Ferris, a botanist at Stanford University. Mexía fell off a cliff and was injured, halting the trip, which yielded 500 specimens, including several new species. The first species to be named after her, Mimosa mexiae, was discovered on this excursion.[6]

Over the next 12 years, she traveled to Argentina, Chile, Mount McKinley (in 1928), Brazil (in 1929), Ecuador (in 1934), Peru and the Straits of Magellan (in 1935), and southwestern Mexico (in 1937) on seven different collecting trips, discovering one new genus, Mexianthus, and many new species among her 150,000 total samples.[6][4][7] During her trip to Western Mexico, she collected over 33,000 samples,[4] including 50 new species.[9] In Ecuador, Mexía worked with the Bureau of Plant Industry and Exploration, part of Ecuador's Department of Agriculture.[10] There, she looked for the wax palm, cinchona, and herbs that bind to the soil.[10] Mexía once traveled up the Amazon River to its source in the Andes mountains with a guide and three other men in a canoe.[5] She also spent three months living with the Araguarunas, a native group in the Amazon. [5] All of these excursions were funded by the sale of her specimens to collectors and institutions alike.[7] Mexianthus, named for Mexía , is a genus of Asteraceae.[7] Specimens from these trips were stored in the Gray Herbarium at Harvard University and the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.[8] Mexía was remembered by her colleagues for her expertise on life in the field as well as her resilience in the tough conditions,[6] as well as her impulsiveness and fractious but generous personality.[8] They lauded her meticulous, careful work and her skills as a collector.[7]

She was a well-known lecturer in the San Francisco bay area, where she entertained audiences with tales and photographs of her travels.[3] Notes on her travels appeared regularly in The Gull, newsletter of the Audubon Society of the Pacific, 1926-35.[2] The Sierra Club Bulletin published two accounts of her adventures, "Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon" (SCB, 18:1 [1933], 88-96),[11] and "Camping on the Equator" (SCB, 22:1 [1937], 85-91).[11] Several accounts of her expeditions were published in Madrono, the journal of the California Botanical Society. It also published a biographical note after her death (Madrono, October, 1938, Vol. IV, No. 8, 274-275).[12] She was a member of the California Botanical Society, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Association of the Pacific, the Sociedad Geografica de Lima, Peru, and had been made a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. She was also an honorary member of the Departamento Forestal y de Casa y Pesca de Mexico.[1]

Her specimen collections can be viewed at the California Academy of Sciences.[2] Portions are duplicated at the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia; Catholic University, Washington, D.C.; the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago; Gray Herbarium, Harvard University; the University of California, Berkeley; and important museums and botanical gardens in London, Copenhagen, Geneva, Paris, Stockholm, and Zurich. Her personal papers are at the California Academy of Sciences and at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley.

There is substantial agreement that Mexía collected some 150,000 specimens in her lifetime.[2][13] Estimates of new species range from two to 500.[2] The Sierra Club Bulletin credits her with two new genera.[2]

References

Citations
  1. 1 2 3 4 "Women in Science: Ynes Mexia 1870-1938". Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Radcliffe, Jane (June 23, 2011). "Ynes Mexia (1870-1938) Biographical Sketch by Jane Radcliffe, Archives Volunteer" (PDF). Ynes Mexia (1870-1938) Biographical Sketch by Jane Radcliffe, Archives Volunteer. California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  3. 1 2 3 4 García, María-Cristina García (June 15, 2010). "MEXIA DE REYGADES, YNES". Handbook of Texas Online. Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved September 22, 2016.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ogilvie & Harvey 2000, pp. 889-890.
  5. 1 2 3 McLoone 1997, pp. 23-30.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Yount 1999, pp. 150-151.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Petrusso 1999, pp. 391-392.
  8. 1 2 3 Bailey 1994, pp. 248-249.
  9. ↑ Oakes 2002, pp. 252-253.
  10. 1 2 Mongillo 2001, pp. 179-180.
  11. 1 2 "Sierra Club Bulletin - History - Sierra Club". vault.sierraclub.org. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  12. ↑ Society, California Botanical. "California Botanical Society". calbotsoc.org. Retrieved 2016-09-22.
  13. ↑ Bonta, Marcia Myers (1991). Women in the Field: America's Pioneer Naturalists. Texas A&M University Press.
  14. ↑ IPNI.  Mexia.
References
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