Ynes Mexia (1870-1938) was an extraordinary botanist, writer, and lecturer who collected over 145,000 samples of plants.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Our STEMinist today was an extraordinary botanist, writer, and lecturer who collected over 145,000 samples of plants. She traveled all over the Western Hemisphere collecting plants and advocating for the rights of indigenous people in the places she visited. It’s particularly notable that she did all this despite the fact that she didn’t start her work in the field until the age of 55. Let’s talk about Ynes Mexia.
Ynes Enriquetta Julietta Mexia was born on May 24, 1870, in Washington, DC. Ynes’ early life was not particularly easy. Her parents divorced when she was quite young and her father moved back to Mexico. On their own, Ynes and her mother first moved down to Texas before eventually moving back east to Philadelphia and then finally to her mother’s native Maryland.
As a child, Ynes was an introvert and showed an early fondness for the outdoors. But she would not find the field of botany until much later in her life. At first she considered becoming a nun, but her father, who came from a prominent Mexican family, said that she would not receive her inheritance if she chose that path. Instead, Ynes moved to Mexico when she finished school and worked on her father’s ranch.
Around the year 1898, Ynes married a man she met in Mexico City. Not long after, her father passed away, and Ynes took over management of the ranch. In 1904, Ynes’ husband died too.
Ynes married again to disastrous effect. Her second husband eventually brought the family ranch to financial ruin. This situation took a serious toll on Ynes’ mental health and she decided to go to San Francisco to seek medical attention.
In San Francisco, Ynes sought a fresh start as a social worker. She also found a new passion: environmental activism. She became involved in the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, and the Save the Redwoods League.
Her involvement in those organizations inspired Ynes, at the age of 51, to go back to school. In 1921, she enrolled at UC Berkeley to study botany. If it’s rare now to see someone go back to school at that age, it was even more unusual back then.
But Ynes had found her calling. In 1925, Ynes went on a trip to Mexico with a group traveling from Stanford. She found the group was holding her up, she set off on her own, and over the course of two years collected 1,500 botanical specimens, including the Mexianus Mexicanus, the first of what would be many plants named after her.
Ynes was hooked. Thus began a 13 year career in botany. With the assistance of curators and experts who helped Ynes refine her skills at specimen preparation and preservation, labeling, and exhibition financing, Ynes traveled extensively to locate and collect plants, including expeditions to Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru, among other destinations. She traveled solo or with local guides, which also sparked her advocacy for indigenous communities.
She wrote: “A well-known collector and explorer stated very positively that ‘it was impossible for a woman to travel alone in Latin America.' 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."
Ynes’ work was not always what many people would deem comfortable. Many found it shocking that a woman in her fifties, especially at that time, spent months in the field, sleeping outdoors and traveling by horseback.
In 1928, Ynes traveled to Alaska to become the first botanist to collect specimens in what’s now Denali National Park.
After that trip, she took another particularly notable exhibition on the Amazon River. She traveled 25,000 miles on a steamship, 5,000 miles by canoe and some additional distance by raft. Throughout the trip she collected 65,000 specimens.
Over the course of her career, she collected 145,000 specimens including 500 that were previously undiscovered in the field of botany. She also wrote and gave lectures about her work and travels.
In 1938, Ynes was diagnosed with lung cancer. She died shortly after her diagnosis. She was 68 years old. She left most of her money to the Sierra Club and the Save the Redwoods League.
Ynes Mexia veered from the expected path and forged a new one for women in her field. She found what she loved late in life and made the most of it, embarking on an impressive career and leaving a lasting legacy.
All month we’re talking about STEMinists. For more on why we’re doing what we’re doing, check out our newsletter, Womannica Weekly. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram @encyclopediawomannica and follow me on Twitter @ jennymkaplan.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
As always, we’ll be taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday!