Ynés Enriquetta Julietta Mexía was a Mexican American botanist. Her love of nature began as a child living in the countryside. She used to take walks in nature, observe birds, and examine plants. She traveled on numerous expeditions to collect plant specimens in Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Perú, Colombia and Alaska.
Born in 1870, she began her formal career in her mid-fifties. Earlier in her life, she had become a widow soon after her first marriage. She had an unhappy second marriage to a man who bankrupted her inheritance. All of this contributed to significant physical and emotional stressors.
Ynes arrived on the Mexican West Coast, by steamer in 1930. She collected plants in Sinaloa, Mexcaltitan and Puerto Vallarta. From Vallarta she traveled by canoe to Quimixto, a small village of 7 families that is part of the Comunidad Indigena de Chacala. There she found a new type of Eugenia, the Eugenia pleurocarpa standl, and a new plant from the Piper (pepper) genus, which she named Piper quimixtense.
In Quimixto, the local people told her about a plant revered for its ability to cure the bite of an insect called “arlomo.” The bite was painful and caused inflammation, infection, and sometimes, death. Mexía captured a specimen and sent it to an entomologist, Dr. E. C. Van Dykean, who declared the insect was a harmless female glow-worm. Dr. Dykean concluded that the bite described by the locals was probably due to the black widow spider.
Mexía cataloged the medicinal plant, as this was an unknown species. It was called Euphorbia mexiae standl in her honor. She also discovered a new genus of the Asteraceae family in Quimixto too. It was named after her too: Mexianthus mexicanus.
Mexia also traveled and collected around La Bufa, the highest point in San Sebastian del Oeste. By the end of her expedition to Mexico, she had collected over 6,600 different plant specimens.
Ynés Mexía had to cope with a certain amount of prejudice in the botanical field. She was a woman of Mexican heritage, and she began her work when she was in her mid 50’s. She was befriended and mentored by a botanist Alice Eastwood who was a source of immense encouragement and support.
Despite the obstacles she faced, Ynés Mexía persevered and became one of the most outstanding scientists of her time and whose work continues to be used by researchers today. She collected about 150,000 specimens during her career, identified and described 500 new species -including 50 plants named in her honor- and discovered two new genera. She died in 1938 from lung cancer, two weeks after she was diagnosed.