145,000 Plants with Adventuress Ynes Mexia

This post was written by Claire D’Mura, a research and reference specialist in the Library’s Science Section.

There has hardly been another plant collector as intrepid as Ynes Mexia, a Mexican American former rancher and social worker, who collected more than 145,000 specimens despite starting her pioneering botanical career only in her mid-50s. Mexia collected plants primarily in Central and South America, as well as in the Western United States and was the first person to collect specimens from Denali, Alaska. She was known for going deeper into unexplored places than other plant collectors of the time, and having more meaningful interactions with the locals, making full use of her fluency in Spanish and hiring guides from remote villages to take her well off the beaten path.

Mexia was born in 1870 in Washington, D.C. to General Enrique A. Mexia, a Mexican diplomat, and Sarah Wilmer Mexia. Her grandfather was José Antonio Mexia, a Mexican military officer, for whom the Texas town of Mexia is named.  While the details of her childhood are a bit uncertain, it is generally accepted that her early years were unstable, marked by frequent relocations, her parents’ eventual separation and litigation over inheritances. She moved to Mexico with her father, where she worked on the family ranch, and later took over the management of it after her father’s death. She married twice, with the first marriage ending with the death of her husband, and the second ending in divorce after the husband bankrupted the ranch.

After these many turbulent years, Mexia moved to San Francisco to seek mental health care from Dr. Philip King Brown, the founder of a treatment center for working-class women with tuberculosis. Brown’s philosophy on treatment, both for tuberculosis and mental health, required patients to engage in a hobby or occupation to facilitate a sense of efficacy and confidence in their abilities, and to pull patients’ focus away from their condition. To Mexia, he prescribed physical activities such as walking, and encouraged her to take classes that might interest her. As her condition improved and she gained confidence, she joined the Sierra Club, which was the beginning of her road into conservation and botany.

Mexia began taking hikes with the Sierra Club and became active in California’s nascent conservation movement. She joined the Save the Redwoods League and advocated for the protection of California’s redwood forests. It was this interest that led her, in 1921, to pursue a degree in Botany from the University of California, Berkeley. At this point, she was 51 years old and felt she had truly found her calling.

In her short botany career, Mexia undertook at least eight lengthy excursions. Her first significant collecting trip was to Mexico, in 1925. She travelled with a group of students from Stanford University but split from the group and began collecting on her own. Mexia gathered more than 1,500 specimens on this first expedition, including the first plant that would carry the Mexia name, Mimosa Mexiae.

One can get a sense of Mexia’s relentless nature in her writings on her travels. Of a 1926 trip to Mexico, she wrote, “I found the luxuriance of the vegetation actually embarrassing. It was hard to know where to begin to collect and still harder to know when to stop” (Mexia, 1929).   In her 1937 article for the Sierra Club Bulletin, “Camping on the Equator,” she described a time when one of her guides insisted the group cease traveling for the day and rest in a village, as there would be no shelter on the path ahead. “To this I vehemently objected, for surely a three hours’ ride was not a day’s journey,” she wrote. “Finally, I rode on, driving the pack horses so that Jose and his son followed perforce. After all it was a bluff on my part, for I did not know the way; but it worked!”

Mexia’s most adventurous and lengthy trip was her 3,000-mile trek across South America, following the Amazon and Marañón Rivers. “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 wrote in a Sierra Club Bulletin article titled “Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon.” When she decided to make this trip across the widest part of South America, she was already on the East coast of the continent, having been collecting in Brazil. Starting out from here, she would be moving against the flow of the river, i.e. not the usual way.  Undeterred, she wrote, “Well—Why not?”

The trip began with a journey up the Amazon on a steam ship. During the vessel’s daily stops to replenish supplies of wood, Mexia would collect plants in the vicinity. Upon her arrival in Iquitos, Peru, just below where the Ucayali and Marañón rivers meet to form the Amazon proper, she stayed for a month to prepare to press further, up the Marañón River and into the Upper Amazon region. For this portion of the journey Mexia and her guides (and all her equipment) traveled in canoes. When the rainy season began, “with unprecedented violence,” the group had to set up camp for three months, before they could make their way back down river by raft (Mexia, 1933/1995, p. 149). Despite the wet conditions and treacherous terrain, she managed to bring back 65,000 specimens.

Mexia kept meticulous field notes, but did not do any formal processing of her collected specimens herself. Instead, her friend, Nina Floy Bracelin, or Bracie as she was commonly known, did most of the processing of Mexia’s collections back in California. For Mexia, her collecting was just one part in her wider interest in the natural world, and she sold her specimens to finance her expeditions. She once wrote to Dr. Brown, “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” (qtd. in Bonta, 1995, p. 136).

Among the 145,000 specimens Mexia collected on her excursions are 500 previously undocumented species and two new genera. Her specimens can still be found at herbaria around the world. More than 50 plants are named after her.

Mexia died in 1938, just 13 years after the start of her botany career. Upon her death, she left her estate to the Sierra Club and Save the Redwood League. A redwood grove was named in her honor.

Many articles about Mexia call her a “late bloomer,” but I see her more as a defiant bloomer; as someone who is astoundingly successful and good at what they do despite an environment that has been less than hospitable. Where many would have withered, she found a way to thrive, like the small cliff ferns clinging to vertical rock faces where other plants could not. Supplied with little fertile soil for most of her life, Mexia, like the ferns she loved, managed to find her anchor in the most untamed lands. Traveling with purpose and a strong sense of adventure, Mexia was able to make contributions to the study of botany and of biodiversity that still have meaning today.

Works Consulted:

• Anema, Durlynn. The Perfect Specimen: the 20th Century Renown Botanical Collector – Ynés Mexía. 2019.
• Bracelin, N. F. “Ynes Mexia.” Madroño. Vol. 4, no. 8, Oct. 1938. p 273-275.
• Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Mexía, Y. (1929). “Botanical Trails in Old Mexico – The Lure of the Unknown. Madroño. Vol. 1, no. 16. 1929. p. 227-38.
• Mexia, Ynes. “Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon.” Sierra Club Bulletin. February 1933. p. 88-96. Rpt. in Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Mexia, Ynes. “Camping on the Equator.” Sierra Club Bulletin. February 1937. p. 85-91. Rpt. in Bonta, Marcia, editor. American Women Afield: Writings by Pioneering Women Naturalists. 1995.
• Bracelin, Nina Floy. The Ynés Mexía Botanical Collections: Oral History Transcript. Recorded Interview Conducted by Annetta Carter, 1983 June 13. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA,. Interview by Annetta Carter, 1983.
• Late Bloomer: The Short, Prolific Career of Ynes Mexia. Science Talk Archive, New York Botanical Garden.
• Ynes Mexia. National Park Service.
• Untold Stories: Ynes Mexia. California Academy of Sciences.
• Three Thousand Miles up the Amazon – A narrative map of Ynes Mexia’s Amazon expedition. New York Botanical Garden Steere Herbarium.

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