In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, Google dedicated its Doodle Sunday to the American-Mexican botanist. It was on this date, in 1925, that Mexía undertook his first botanical expedition and travelled to Mexico with a group from Stanford University to collect rare botanical species. But Mexía, 55, quickly decided she could do more for herself and abandoned the group to travel around the country for two years.
During this expedition, Mexía fell off a cliff and had a broken hand, ending her journey, but not before collecting more than 1,500 specimens - 50 of which had not previously been discovered.
Mexía was born in 1870 in Washington, DC, where her father was a Mexican diplomat. She was considering becoming a nun, but she became a social worker in San Francisco, where she had moved in 1908. Her love for botany began to blossom at the age of 51, when she began her botany studies at UC Berkeley and joined the Sierra Club.
Mexía has made many expeditions over the next 12 years, often travelling alone on his collection trips, which is very rare at the time. His expeditions to Alaska, southern Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Chile produced 150,000 samples, including a new genus and many new species.
During an expedition to South America in 1929, Mexía covered about 3000 km along the Amazon by canoe, at the source in the Andes. On an expedition to Mexico in 1938, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which would have cost him his life in July at the age of 68.
Although Mexía never finished her studies, she became a renowned botanist, often giving lectures in the San Francisco Bay Area and publishing stories of her adventures in various environmental periodicals. During his short career as a botanist, Mexía collected 150,000 specimens, including at least two new genera - Mexianthus Robinson and Spulula Mains - and about 500 new species, 50 of which bear his name.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator
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