Ynés Mexía: Serious Plant Collecting at 55

chic

20 hours ago

Title card: Ynés Mexía, Serious Plant Collecting at 55, Beyond the Label, Chic Soul Journeys

Sources also write her name as Ynes Mexia, without accents.

In 1925, at the age of 55, Ynés Mexía went to Sinaloa, Mexico, on an expedition with Roxana S. Ferris of Stanford University’s Dudley Herbarium. Her friend Nina Floy Bracelin’s obituary of her in Madrono counts 500 collection numbers from the trip and calls it her “first important collecting.”

Who Ynés Mexía was

She was born May 24, 1870, in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. The National Park Service says she was born to a Mexican diplomat in Washington, D.C.; Bracelin writes that her father was at that time resident in Washington as a representative of the Mexican government. In 1871, the family moved to Limestone County, Texas, on a land-grant that is today the town of Mexia, Texas. In the 1880s, she moved to Mexico City to live with her father. The California Academy of Sciences says she moved to San Francisco in 1908 to seek treatment for extreme mental stress and depression.

Steps toward the field

She joined the California Botanical Society in 1915. In 1918, she encountered her first old-growth redwoods at what is now Montgomery Woods. In 1919, she joined the newly formed Save the Redwoods League. In 1921, at 51, she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue a degree in Botany. In 1922, Bracelin writes, she joined an expedition led by E. L. Furlong.

How she paid

The California Academy of Sciences says her plant collecting was “largely self-funded.” The Library of Congress adds that “she sold her specimens to finance her expeditions.”

The first expeditions: 1925-27

In 1926-27, Bracelin’s table records, she returned to western Mexico: 1,600 numbers, 33,000 specimens. Writing about her Mexico work in Madrono in 1929, she said: “It was hard to know where to begin to collect and still harder to know when to stop.”

Denali, 1928

In June 1928, the National Park Service records, she and her assistant, Francine Payne, were spending several weeks in Mount McKinley National Park, now Denali. Professor Joseph Dixon had recommended her to the park, which that year had “just 800 visitors and a staff of six.” The Park Service says the samples she collected “were part of the park’s first large and systematic plant collection and botanical investigation.” Bracelin’s table records 365 numbers and 6,100 specimens from the trip.

The Amazon, in her own words

She wrote in the Sierra Club Bulletin in 1933:

> “I decided that if I wanted to become better acquainted with the South American Continent the best way would be to make my way right across it.”

She added: “No one had ever heard of its being done, so they did not know.” She went with “some letters of introduction, a knowledge of Spanish, and a quantity of botanical-collecting equipment.”

Ecuador and Tierra del Fuego

In 1934-35, Bracelin’s table records, she went to Ecuador to search for palms, cinchonas and soil-binding plants for the USDA. In 1936-37 she collected in southern Chile, the Straits of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego.

Her last trip

Bracelin writes that in 1938 she was collecting in the mountains of the State of Oaxaca, Mexico, when she became ill and was obliged to return home. “Death followed on July 12, 1938.”

The full count

Bracelin’s 1938 obituary counts “about 8800 numbers, approximating 145,000 specimens.” Her collections yielded two new genera and about 500 new species, of which more than 50 were named in her honor. The California Academy of Sciences notes that she “never formally described any herself.”

Mexianthus

On the 1926-27 Mexico expedition, she numbered a specimen as no. 1202. In her own 1929 Madrono article, she published a letter she had received from botanist B. L. Robinson: “there was a new genus among these, namely no. 1202,” and “have called it Mexianthus mexicanus.”

How she described herself

The Library of Congress blog quotes these words of hers from “Bonta 1995, p. 136”: “I am not a dyed-in-the-wool scientist, I am a nature lover and a bit of an adventuress and my collecting is secondary, even though very real and very important.”

The Library of Congress blog’s author adds: “Many articles about Mexia call her a ‘late bloomer,’ but I see her more as a defiant bloomer.”

The Library of Congress writes that she made full use of her fluency in Spanish and hired guides from remote villages, and that she kept meticulous field notes.

What she left behind

The National Park Service says: “Researchers still use her collections to this day.” The New York Botanical Garden says almost 3,000 of the plant specimens she collected are in its online virtual herbarium.

Which moment here stays with you? Leave it in the comments. Or tell me the name you would have added, the woman whose story belongs in the same conversation.