Female Firsts: Ynes Mexica

Published Jan 17, 2025, 9:53 PM

Ynes Mexica lived a life full of adventure and full of turning points. Yves joins us to share the story of the pioneering botanist.

Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff I've never told you, production by Heart Radio, and it is time for another edition of Female First, which means we are once again joined by the terrific, the fabulous Eves. Welcome. Hey, you just reminded me that we haven't seen you since New Year's yea, and I had. I had a little bit of a moment.

Yeah, I felt it, but I understood though. That's why I didn't give you any flag for it, because I was like, wait a second. Last time we talked, you were like, see you in the New year. Somehow we're half the month in already.

It's true, It's true. Well, how was New Year's for you? How has the New Year been?

The New Year has been good? Honestly, I know it's the whole thing, you know, refresh restart. People arguing about whether it's a real restarts the middle of winter, YadA, YadA, YadA, so forth and so on, But it really does feel like a refresh like kind of a restart. For me. It's off to a good start. I am like not, I have goals that I have not been, you know, pressuring myself about that. I feel like I'm managing well. I have some Sankalpla's basically commitments I've created for myself for this year for things that I'm not doing and anything that I'm not doing, anything that I am doing that so far, you know, it's going okay. So yeah, it's it's been good. The actual New Year celebration for me, I didn't do anything, which is what I wanted to do. So it's fine and yeah, so I think over all I can say thumbs up to it. What about y'all thumbs up? I feel.

Samantha asked me about the New Year, and I was like, it's like it just passed me by.

I don't know.

I feel I'm stuck in some kind of temporal disintegration. We talked about this is where people don't know what time it is anymore, and so I just have like random days. I know something important is happening, but mostly it's been kind of the same, the same stuff. Really busy. I will say, it's been a very busy start to the New year. But we got snow that was exciting. We talked about that in our experience with snow in the South.

The thing is the thing about that though other people are excited for us too. So I was talking to someone recently who doesn't even live here. She lives on the other side of the country, just like, oh, I see y'all got snow in Atlanta. We haven't gotten any yet, Like, wow, the whole nation is watching Atlanta and excite it for us. Thank you. I appreciate it. I don't know if y'all saw the Shenanigans on online or on the news, but I mean, if you haven't, you will probably get a good keick out of that.

I think my TikTok was flooded with Atlanta snow content and most of the people going this is why Atlanta can't have snow, and everybody doing something really ridiculous, like a lot of people.

Like skiing down streets.

Yeah, we saw lots of that, people trying to slid and they weren't really bad at it, like so many things people like, yeah, well I was trying to skip that way because I was like, that is not something we want to celebrate.

But they were having a good time.

But my favorite part is seeing people's reaction and being like, good for you. This is nice to be excited about something we hate, Like like people from New York and Canada being like, nah, we don't do this, but I love seeing that joy in you. So it felt like a good little reprieve with all the chaos in the world, especially in that our country, with the very very different climate experiences happening. And I'm not laughing at that, but I'm just saying, like it's such a vast difference that you can't forget too much. But like it's it's been people like saying it's been a nice for them to who are not even in this area to experience the snow and excitement to see people find joy in moments like this. But yeah, but my New Year's I just realized that we're just all in the point of being the adults who are like, we don't do that anymore. Maybe it was COVID, maybe it is age. I don't know, but going out seems ridiculous that I don't know anybody who actually went out outside of like a small get together with their own little cub I haven't seen many of that, even to the point that I wasn't even advertised about events, and before I would get advertisements like this event is happening, this place is happening.

They're doing this.

I didn't get any of that. Yeah.

No, yeah, there's usually like some sort of some sort of some sort of get together happening on some rooftop, right, some sort of party reserved for this.

You want you're not gonna want to miss the countdown for the see any.

We're tired, We're tired. We're all tired, apparently.

But it was nice to not do things. And I went to bed immediately at twelve fifteen.

I'm pretty sure.

Oh well, I have to say.

I was.

I'm very, very excited to talk about the person we're talking about today, because just by the like headlines I saw alone, I was like, oh my gosh. But before we get into that, I want to ask, I know Samantha's thoughts about this, how are you with plants?

So as a caretaker? Is that what you're asking? Horrible horrible not plant mom, whatever, this whole millennial plant parent thing is. I'm not part of the crew. I kill them, and I've had I have family members who are really sobly good at it, but plants. I didn't grow up around plants either, so unfortunately house plants or you know, I didn't do any farming tending to gardens anything like that. My mom did a little bit of that, but not in a really major way, so I didn't have that as part of my natural inclination. And I've tried to be a houseplant parent, and I've had people give me plants and I do care for them, like I have feelings for them, but those feelings just don't actually pan out to actually equally care. So, you know, just I have no plants now, so that now that i've you know, I've i've lived on the road, I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff recently. I don't really have any of my own plants right now. So I'm bad with plants. Love to look at them, love to be in them, love to frolic in them, love to smell them, all of that. I admire them from a distance. You have feelings for them. I really like that term. That's that's good. That's good. I do because you know, they're dramatic. And so when I would have when I had them, and they would just be passing out every night, and I'm like, Okay, I get that I'm not a good plant parent, but do you can you give me a little credit just a little bit over?

Do you do we really have to be that.

I'm melodramatic here. I get it.

You have had too much water and I've done too much.

I get it right, Like I can't. I've already I've already chosen the hardiest plants. I can't, like, I don't need to water you that much of your so acting like this so because I'm not. You know, I can't do the delicate plants if it has a colorful flower on it, and count me over count.

Well, then you find out that the colorful flowers is the death blue. Oh that's so good, you pretty, but that's not supposed to happen. Yeahause I have learned in the midst of like people trying to get me to be a plant person, and I'm like, why are you setting me up till and then they set it up with these are hard to kill, and then I'm like, watch me.

It's like it's really nice either. It's really nice to be around people who do know a lot about plants, like the intimate knowledge that they have of just little tricks that they have. I was around somebody who gardens recently, and he was just telling me to like, put a banana peel in your plant water, and I was like, I have no idea. That's the easy. That's something easy that I can understand. Don't ask me about the chemistry because I haven't gotten to that point yet. But you know, I appreciate that that the level of knowledge that people people have about plants, and I am interested in herbalism as well, so I you know, they're they're intersecting interests that I have that I just haven't been able to delve into yet.

Well maybe in the new year.

You knew you Amy, don't try to add to anything. I've got a lot of stuff going on, and you know me, if I do, you might tempt me. I might be like, maybe I do need to learn how to do this thing.

I did not didn't mean to set some kind of trap.

I really did. Well.

I am so so excited to talk about the story of the person that you brought today. Eves.

Who are we talking about today? We're talking about es Mahea. She was the first so we're talking about plants because she was the first Mexican American woman botanist and she was the first botanist to collect plants and was now Denali National Park. So she know far what I'm saying about myself and how I am with plants. That was not her So she wasn't necessarily a gardener, but she did know a lot about plants. She collected a lot of plants, She had her hands on a lot of plants. She studied a lot of plants. So I, too, Annie was excited. I figured y'all might be excited as well because of the all the science that is involved in her particular chosen field and how cool she was too, Like this intersection of person that she is is just my kind of person, because I love outdoor stuff. I love stuff that's related to nature. But it wasn't just that, Like Inas Mahia actually went on these fantastic travels where she was like very sufficient in the way that she was interacting with the world. She was spending time outside and had lots of like outdoor skill that I appreciated with help from other people around her, of course, which is something we'll talk about when we get there. But yeah, I'm excited too. I'm excited to talk about her.

Yeah, And she's also such a great story of someone like kind of later in life being like, you know what, I want to do this and I love that. So shall we get into the history.

Yes. So her name was yez Enriquetta Julieta Mehia, and she was born on May twenty fourth, eighteen seventy, in Washington, DC. So she came from a kind of well off background. Her father was General Enrique A. Mehia, who was a Mexican diplomat under President Benito Juarez, and her mother was Sarah Wilmer Mehia, and they had some family history in the Roman Catholic community in Baltimore, and she also had other siblings from a previous marriage, but they weren't in Washington, DC that long. When Inez was around one, they moved to Mahea, Texas, and that town was based on the family name. It was on land that they had that the family gave to Texas. And she mostly kept to herself as a child. So I don't think there's not a ton about her that she wrote as a child, or that her family wrote about her as a child, at least from my understanding. But from what I've seen, she is depicted as a pretty shy child. Like she was. She kept to herself. She didn't go out and hang out with people a lot. She was pretty isolated and just introverted, seemingly, but she was close to her older sister, adel and they did do some gatherings and had outings together when they were young, and Ines was interested in reading and spending time outside. She started school, but in eighteen seventy nine her parents separated and Enrique went to Mexico and Inez, her mother, and her sister went to Philly. And Inez went to a private school and boarding schools in Philly and in Maryland and in Toronto. So she moved a lot, and she wrote letters back to her dad, who was in Mexico. But when she finished school in the late eighteen eighties, she went to Mexico City to live with her dad, and she ended up assisting on the ranch that her father owned, and in the process found out that she had other siblings from her father's side, Although I don't think they were she was super close with the siblings on that side, and her dad did end up dying sometime around eighteen ninety six, I believe, and at that point Ines took over the ranching business. So just a reminder, she was born in eighteen seventy, so at this point this is already about twenty six or so years later. So this is around the age she is. In eighteen ninety eight, she married a man named Herman Lawa and they lived on a ranch that she inherited there near Mexico City. He died in nineteen oh four. They had been married for about seven years, and she stayed on the ranch. She ran the business. Okay, so we're in this first part of her life. You know, she's she's lived a lot of life already and running this ranching business. So in nineteen oh eight, Inez married Augustine Deregatas, but it didn't seem to be that. It wasn't that happy of a marriage, Like the marriage wasn't doing super well, and she I don't really fully know what happened. What I've seen it explained as is a mental quote unquote breakdown. I don't know what that means. I mean, people have used that terminology, which is pretty problematic terminology in a lot of instances. So I wish I knew further details of what a quote unquote mental breakdown meant for Inez. At the time, she was hurting in some way. It's all. It's all that I know, and her mental capacity was hurt by whatever situation she was going through. However, she was processing things and that affected where she wanted to be and how she wanted to be in her marriage. And so a doctor told her to leave Mexico because it would help her mental health, and she ended up going to a psychiatrist named doctor Philip King Brown in California, and this is when psychiatry was pretty new wish of a field. But she sought help from this doctor in California and she and her husband. They lived for a little while in a hotel, then in an apartment, but her husband went back to Mexico seemingly at her encouragement. She wanted him to manage the ranch, even though he didn't really want to be there, but she wanted him to be there, and you know, she was still dealing with her mental illness there. So she wrote to doctor Brown a lot, but he didn't really want her to become attached to seeing him as a patient. So they were working together quite a bit, and he basically said, look, you need to go take some classes. I think it'll help you. And that's how she became interested in painting and photography, and she wrote stories and articles as well. So I feel like this is really nice to see because she was the help that she was getting worked, which isn't well, I can't say it worked per se. What I can say is that it seemingly helped her, like process whatever she was going through, and his instruction and his guidance seemed to have helped her, which is nice to see that, Like she went to this doctor to get help and he actually helped her. And also part of that help was her being able to spend time in a hobby that was directly related to her healing. Like so it wasn't like, okay, like go do this thing because there's some sort of ulterior motive for it, or it's necessarily because you need to be learning because you need some sort of skill, or women should be doing this. It wasn't about that. It was like, okay, go do this thing. I'm encouraging you to go do this thing for the sake of your healing. And through that healing process is how she found the thing that she wanted to be dedicated to that was part of her purpose for the rest of her life, which I think it's pretty it's really nice. So like kind of a very sweet point I feel like in a life story, because so many times things that can inspire people. These people who have all these pioneering achievements might not necessarily be the brightest thing. It might be some sort of catastrophe that happened. It might be born and bred out of difficulty, and in this case it is. But it's nice to see that this kind of developed. Her interest in her profession, kind of developed naturally around some of the things she was doing for leisure for her own healing. And I say that as a person who you know is very invested in healing and yoga and that. So it just feels kind of to me like a testimony that when you take the time to pause and you're taking the time to do this healing, you're not forcing things to happen. Then in some instances, and in this case, you know, she was led into a direction that felt really fulfilling to her. So this at this point in nineteen seventeen is when she joined the Sierra Club and she went to Yosemite National Park and other places in the Sierra Nevada. She was able to be introduced to the outdoor world and the natural world through her participation with the Sierra Club. She didn't want to go back to Mexico, so she was really loving it. She was like, Okay, I'll be healed. I'm exploring nature, I'm meeting people. I'm a brand new woman. And she didn't want to go back to Mexico, and her husband was bankrupting the ranch in the meantime, so they separated and she sold the ranch and she continued to hike and camp with the Sierra Club and experts would come to talk about wildlife and history, and her interest in nature was then from henceforth, you know, ignited. She really enjoyed being in the redwoods in northern California, and just a moment to ignore knowledge right now what we're going through, because I know we're talking about this in January twenty twenty five. The wildfires have been happening, are still happening in California. This history that ines Mehia is related to is more so focused in northern California. But I mean, I figure this is a very complex topic. There has been natural destruction in California for a long time in many different ways. There have been many people Inez and other people included, dedicated to the conservation and preservation history of nature in California. That was another reason that I picked Yez before the wildfires started happening, But it feels pretty precient to be able to talk about nature, appreciation of nature, but also the work that goes into learning about nature so we can appreciate it better and so that it continues to exist in the world. So I don't want to go, you know, go on, or I would be remissed to not mention that the wildfires in California are happening, and if people have resources that they can dedicate in any way to be able to help those efforts, then that would be a great thing to do. But back to you as a story, Yeah, So she hikes and she camps with the Sierra Club, in love with it and enjoying being outside in nature and learning more about it. She joined the Save of the red Woods League, and since the trees were threatened, you know, by the timber industry and earthquakes at the time, she was invested in continuing to protect and uplift this nature that she was being really inspired by. In nineteen twenty one, she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley as a quote unquote special student, which feels kind of ageous to me. I think that was an actual terminology that was used at the time for people I guess who weren't enrolled in a normal course. And this was nineteen twenty, so in general, there weren't a lot a lot of women at this point. She was fifty or so fifty one. She was born in eighteen seventy, so she was around fifty one when she enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the course of her study, she was introduced to botanical collecting and she started taking more courses in botany. So she didn't go in saying I'm going to study botany. She found that through her course study, which she started in natural history. Yeah, so I really appreciate this as well. In her story of how she was like, I want to study I'm interested in this, So I'm going to do something that not a lot of other women my age are doing right now. But it's not necessarily driven by an impetus of other people aren't doing. It's not I'm going to do it. I'm going to be that person. It was just I'm interested in natural history. It's been in liven by my experiences that I'm having here in California. So I'm going to go learn about it from other people. So she learns about it from other people, and she meets other people. She went to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, and she met the botanist Alice Eastwood, and Alice became kind of a mentor Tenez. Inez went with Alice on some of her collecting trips, and Inez also met Roxanna Stenchville Ferris, who was going to Sinaloa, Mexico with her husband to collect specimens, and Roxanna invited Enez on the trip. Now, the trip didn't work out unfortunately, Apparently Anez didn't like working with the Ferrises, and she left their expedition. Now she decided to go off on her own. This part of her story seems like kind of another inciting incident because as we go forward in her story, we'll see that she really really does like to walk in her own footsteps, like she likes to be off on her own charge. She doesn't seem to be that receptive to having to deal with other people's ways of working. She's like, I gotta do it my way, and that's the way it's going to be. And it seemed like maybe because she had just she was just getting into botany. She was just starting to go on collecting trips. Is the first time she realized that early on. So she started traveling in the area around Mazitline on her own and collecting, but she needed a guide, and a local helped her out. And this is the point where I want to mention go back to the idea that she went off on her own, because I've seen it a lot where they talk about her having solo collecting trips, Like if anybody is listening to this and they want to go do more research on Ninez Mahia. A lot of times I see them say solo collecting trip, like her first solo collecting trips. And one thing that kind of tripped me up about that is that she was always working with guides. So I get that she's on her own. It's not necessarily something that is a part of a larger expedition. Necessarily sometimes I mean it is under the auspices or the promise of compensation for her specimens from institutions. But like there's this, I feel like it is a misnomer to call them solo trips, is all I want to say. So, yes, she's totally adventurous. Yes, she's totally capable. Yes, she seemed to be very independent of a person in the way that she thought, in the way that she chose to go out to places like she was very pioneering and what she chose to go out after. However, I wouldn't call them solo because everywhere she went she was not familiar with those areas. It was her first time in those areas, and she needed a local to help her out. So these were definitely group efforts. So though in her collecting efforts, she ended up falling over a cliff, y'all. And I'm sorry it is not funny. It's not funny, but I mean, just imagine the dedication of somebody's you know, there's a cliff there and I really have to I have to get to this specimen. I'm really invested in collecting it, and I fall over. It's like a movie moment. It's a total movie moment. And falling over a cliff for you to because you're going to your highest heights to be able to do what you're doing. She ended up breaking some ribs and injuring her hand, and fortunately she wasn't too badly. You know this didn't stop her from continuing in her collecting journey. This is at the end of her story, y'all, like many more years, okay, right.

He disclaimer, Sorry, no, this is.

Not the literal finger. So she had to go back to California. But she had collected about five hundred species, and one of them that she collected was the first to be named after her, and Mimosa mehie. Somebody's probably going to correct me. That knows a lot more about Latin terminology that I than I do. But the she she would go on to have many other secimens named after her. But anyway, the collecting process itself, just a little bit about what she actually had to go through could be difficult. So she had to hike, She had to travel in canoes and boats. She had to ride horses because the places she was going was remote. Obviously she needed some sort of transportation to get from one place to another. And it was also expensive because she had to have equipment on her and she had to carry that around with her. She had to carry a dryer and a plant press for her specimens, and she had to bring a camera, a compass, and other items for general survival. So I am thinking, I mean I've backpacked, you know, I've camped to understand what it's like to carry things on your back and be like going for miles and then having to sleep wherever you are. But imagine just having your gear for survival, but then on top of that, you also have to carry your equipment that you have to have for your job, which is also heavy. So she had packed animals and a lot of times she had you know, her guides with her as well. But that doesn't make it less of a difficult and arduous process because she's doing something that's physically intense in her hiking, and she's she's got a goal in collecting all these specimens which she has to dry and take back with her.

So she.

Had to go through that in her collecting process. And when she went out on her first trip that kind of didn't start. As part of that exhibition, that expedition that we just talked about, Inez got several herbariums in natural history institutes to pay or agree to pay her twenty cents per specimen, and in August nineteen twenty six she left San Francisco and she soon arrived and Sinaloa. She hired a guy named Mauro, and they packed the plants and had to press them to dry them. And there are some notes that she took about her travels, documenting the specimens that she was collecting and the nature that she was seeing along the way. And she said, the wild fig tree Ficus mexicanomic here grows to huge proportions as the green fruit hung high. Maro defintely lassoed some fruiting branches. For me, appreciate that instance of her talking about the guide and clearly how he's used to the terrain because it's his area, and he knows how to interact with the nature. He knows how to get the fruit from it. However, she documented her own prejudices toward indigenous people in more than one instance. But in one instance, for example, she wrote about how she didn't want to guard because it was recommended that she had a guard for where she was going. She said, I would feel as though I were underguard. But I am terribly intrigued with the idea of the Indians and the mountains. They are not savage Indians like the Yaquis, just shy and afraid of strangers. So this was a sentiment that came up with her more than once about her thinking about Native Americans and indigenous people in a way as if there were savages, expecting them to be savages, and when they weren't that was a surprise for her. That seemed like that was an abnormality. So she definitely exhibited her prejudices in her writing as well. But she continued to go on more collecting trips. She hired locals to help her. She talked about more of her guides in Mexico. She talked about how, in one instance, it was one of her guys named Jose, how he could get along in the dark much better that she could. She was like, I could keep up with him in the daytime, but like you know, at a certain point in the dark, he would get really ahead of me and he would have to wait a long time on her. So she documented her difficulties and like the physical strenuousness of what she was doing. She ended up going to Alaska in nineteen twenty eight when the British Museum of Natural History funded a trip for her to go there. She went with a young botanist named Francis Payne. But another situation in which she was like, I think I needed this on my own because she's slow me down. So she kind of left France's pain behind, and she was venturing into places where botanical collection hadn't yet occurred in her in this way of collecting, Like, who's to say it. There were indigenous people already collecting plants there, but in this way of documenting specimens, it hadn't occurred. And most of the time it was just her and her pack dogs and rain, cold temperatures, wind, and fragile plants really made the collection process that was already a hard thing even harder, and an Alaskan had to rescue her from her campsite when she got lost because of heavy snow on September twelfth. I saw a quote of hers later on where she says, I never got lost. I'm not sure if I included that in this conversation, but I thought back about this situation. I'm like, I feel like this counts as you getting lost. This was, but it was because that specific quote that I saw was it seemed to be a response to people saying, while you're doing all this on your own as a woman, this is the thing that other women don't do, And she's like, you know, I never got lost. I never did this. It wasn't that difficult for me. But she clearly had challenges. You know, this was difficult to range. She was just up to the challenge. It was. It was challenges that she was willing to go go through. But she met Nina Floyd Bracelin in nineteen twenty seven at the University of California and they started working together. And their relationship was very key in Ineza's legacy because Inez would collect and Nina was sort in process. So Inez wasn't really into the sort and in processing situation. She would go into the field. She was a field worker. She would go in and she would collect the plants, but she didn't do the sorting and the processing afterwards. So it was a pretty handy relationship. And Nina would also handle paperwork in raising money. So the adventures are numerous. Inez spent time living collecting in Brazil. She traveled up the Amazon, she went to Peru, she hired porters and canoe people, guides hunters, She met native folks and she brought them small gifts along the way, like fish hooks, and when she was traveling up the Amazon, she has you can read about how she was on the raft and they went through like whirlpools and they got shot out one way, and it was hard for them to get to the banks of the Amazon because rafts aren't very navigable, like they're not that you can't really handle them that well. I mean, don't ask me about it. I've been in a kayak and I've had I'm not let's just put it this way. I'm not the biggest fan of kayaking, and I can't imagine what it would be like being on a raft in these conditions. But she was guided by capable hands. Even in capable hands, nature can be unpredictable. So Inez ended up going all over South America over the rest of her life, you know, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, collecting plants dedicated to her mission, and she did gain notoriety for her work. She was invited to speak about it. She kept writing to that doctor we talked about earlier in the episode who helped her out, who his name was, doctor Philip King Brown. She kept writing to him, and she told a news reporter in nineteen thirty seven, this is a quote, so I do have it. So the quote was, I don't think there's any place in the world where a woman can't venture alone. In all my travels, I've never been attacked by a wild animal. Lost my way are called a disease. Okay, so I guess technically, ain't you know how to break bad? I feel like it's just a little shaky on the lost thing. So maybe she didn't make it to her campsite, but she had to be pulled out.

She made it out. Maybe that's what she meant.

Maybe that's true. Yeah, so she said though that now that after now that I'm back, after more than two years in the whiles of South America, I find myself longing for a nice, quiet jungle again, she said at one point. And I just wanted to include that quote. Because she liked the experience of being in the wilderness. It wasn't It was clear that she was drawn to it because she spent she spent years on collecting expeditions, and she pressed through difficult situations, climbed rock walls, you know, went through she had her guys cut through, like used a machete to cut through bramble for her, got back later than anticipated to sites that they needed to get through. You know, she went through There were a lot of physical challenges along the way, and that was what filled her up. That was what filled her cup. She really loved being there. So it's nice to see her reflect on just that, the good time that she had when she was outdoors. You know, it was about the collecting, of course, it was about the science, but she was actually enjoying what she was doing, and she did do more adventuring and collecting in Mexico once again. Later in her life, she injured herself in a fall. I think she slipped when she was going across a river, a crossing rocks something like that. She did end up recovering enough to keep exploring, but she was feeling more periods of sickness and weakness and she had to head back to the United States. In May of nineteen thirty eight, she made it back to San Francisco, but she was diagnosed with lung cancer. It seemed to have come on pretty quickly, like she realized she was sick, went back quickly, was diagnosed quickly, and she died on July twelfth, nineteen thirty eight. In her well, she gave money to the California Academy of Sciences, were her longtime you know, collaborator Nina Bracelin, who was also called Bracy, so she could keep working at the California Academy of Sciences on Eneza's collections and on other plant collections. So she allowed her money helped fund Nina to be able to continue working. She also gave money to save the Red Woods League and the Sierra Club, which we've already talked about. She was dedicated to before, so makes sense that she gave them money. And she had collected about one hundred and forty five thousand specimens, maybe more I've seen, I've seen more. It's said that she collected one hundred and forty thousand to one hundred fifty around that amount of specimens, even though she never formally described any plants herself. She didn't collect that many, and there are plants named after her, and many of her photos are in the archives at the California Academy of Sciences, and there is if anybody is interested in reading an oral history about her, there is one in the z Mahia Botanical Collections at the University of California, Berkeley that people can access. They were conducted in nineteen sixty five. In nineteen sixty seven, by Annetta Carter. This is an oral history with Bracy So Nina Floyd Bracelin. This is an interview with her, and in it you can read the whole thing. But in it she talks about how Enes stabbed a grad student. So in the rundown, there was a grad student who was essentially teasing Enez a little bit. They were out for lunch, like eating sandwich, and Nina said, quote, she reached at her with a great big knife and jabbed her and ruined the stocking, of course, and cut her leg. Afterwards, I said, now listen, this is terrible, and you've got to buy two new pairs of stockings for that girl. She cannot afford this. Look what you've done to her. And it was bleeding. You know, it wasn't too serious end quote. Okay, y'all can continue reading that inter or that part of the interview. But I just think it's it's I don't know if it was just a time or what, but they seem very concerned about her stockings rather than her legs.

Get her two new ones.

Just two new stockings. No band aids, no bandages, no, no, nothing about wound dressing or antiseptics or whatever. You call it and you need to be able to deal with this wound. Instead, just these buy the girl some stockings. She can't afford this.

Those are not like silk, right, like during that time they were expensive.

They must have been, Samantha, I say it. But to be honest, though, the other thing that stood out to me about this interaction just kind of put in the pieces together about how people have described Ess. They say that she didn't want to be around people, She didn't really like people, seemingly, It's kind of what it said because in this same oral history, Bracy said that In seemed to like her Bracy, she seemed to like her more than other people. So she was like one of the few people that Ines could could handle it up with. Yeah, exactly. So I'm wondering about Inez's character and was she kind of a This is me trying to put a character together who I didn't know, But it's like what she she she spent so much time around plants and in the outdoor. She loved plants more than she loved people. Is like, I'm wondering if that's her tagline because she was always leaving people behind, didn't want to go bring other people in expeditions, besides the people that she would meet in the locales that she was going to that could help her work. So these were people who weren't her friends or she met them in the course of her work. I'll say that much. I can't say that they weren't her friends didn't become her friends. But I'm curious about that part of her personality. And the other thing about this interaction that makes me curious is how calculated it was. Because in the oral History, Bracy said that she wanted it to look like it was Yes's idea to replace the stockings. So she's like, I know that Inez won't of her own volition, be like I think I should get the girl some more stockings. She's like, no, I'm standing on business. I get stabbed her and I meant it. So Bracy had to be that person who's like, I need to make it look like it's her idea, just to make it better, which is funny but also kind of scary, you know. So anyway, she got read the rested of that if you want to. Inez also published notes from and accounts from her travels in different publications. She was a member of the California Botanical Society, the Sierra Club, the Audubon Association of the Pacific, and other organizations, and you can see her specimen collections. I haven't had the privilege, but you can see our specimen collections at the California Academy of Sciences, and parts of it are duplicated at other institutions in the United States and Europe. And Anneza's papers are at the California Academy Science and in the Berkeley Library at the University of California. So there is other stuff you can see. You can research some of the other specimens she's collected, stuff that's been named after her. But I think it's a pretty cool story. I'm here for adventure. I like to feel like and think that and say that I have an adventurer spirit. Love being in the outdoors. I like hiking. I like plants and trees as even though I'm not a good plant parent, I like them. I like you know, so I I really enjoyed In as a story. Definitely complexities in there, definitely threads of environmental protection and conservation that are super important threads of doing whatever you want to do at any point in your life that you want to do. If you want to do it. I mean, there are so many themes and messages that I think are valuable in it as a story.

Yes, completely agree. I mean we say it every time, but I don't know why there's not a miniseries on this woman's life. This is falling off a cliff where I.

Can get all violence and adventure romance and come on.

A woman who hates other people but loves plants.

Like he's turning point. Maybe it was a midlife crisis where he was like, I'm gonna need you to go out because you might help somebody. Yeah, like I wonder, like what you know, but that is kind of the beginning times of like really trying to figure out your life, and like my life is. Her life was made up of like a ranch that she didn't really want, and I can't imagine being a woman owner of a ranch and like that already sounds kind of like intense and it's in itself, and then being married to people that you don't really want to be married to but you're like, yeah, I did it, I'm here, and then figuring out but I really like these plants and I can go and sit and listen to birds and look and discover new things and just be here like that's a lot of it kind of sounds like finding herself. It's like love prey eat but not but lance right, and how that goes movie by the way, I don't even.

Know close enough.

I got your point, thank you, Yes, that one.

Well, it's also really fascinating to me. I also feel like I have an adventurous spirit, but I'm I'm a big nerd and like people are still discovering things today, like new plants and new animals. I was reading about a new animal that was discovered yesterday and it was just like, there's still so much to explore and discover and it's.

Amazing.

The flip side is, of course the the sad necessity of the preservation part, but like she did so much as staggering how much she did, how many things she found, because I'm someone who I would just be out and I'm like, I don't know has that been discovered?

How well I know that a.

New Obviously I haven't studied it, so that that doesn't help, honestly, And.

You probably stepped on a plant that was probably very Protestant at some point.

This is this is your revenge. Be trying to trick you into being a plant mom. Yeah.

Wow. But the other side of that, too, Annie, is that there are probably specimens gone that she ran across in her collections that no longer exist. I mean, she was in South Americas, in Brazil, she was in Amazon. A lot of that has come on now. Yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah, so I'm glad it's all you can see it. You can see a lot of it online. There is a I didn't watch it, but I saw that there's a PBS documentary. So there's a lot of stuff about her life. There's still no mini series, unfortunately, but you can find a lot about her, and she just sounds like a fascinating complex character.

Yeah. I think y'all are right. I think you're right, Samantha. There should be some sort of dramatization, some sort of It's they have all the markers for a great story. You got the insiding and as you've got the turning point, you know, you got the heroes, journeys, traveling, I mean some one. Yeah, so maybe maybe y'all should y'all should be the ones to champion talking about this every time we have IV. It's true, it's not our original story at all. That's literally someone's legacy. But no, seriously, it's it's worth covering a lot more. I mean, it's fascinating. It's a fascinating story, really is Wow.

I cannot recommend enough listeners go research more. But as always, thank you so much Ease for bringing this this story to us. I had no idea about it, and I love learning about it, and thank you for being here. We always love seeing.

You you too, I'm glad to be here. Thanks y'all.

Where can the good listeners find you?

Y'all can find me? The easiest way is to go to my website. That's Eves Jeffcoat dot com. If you don't know how to spell that, that's why V E S J E F F C O A T dot com. I'm also on Instagram and not apologizing. And if you go to my bio there you'll also be able to get to my website. You can sign up to my newsletter. From there. You can also get the link directly to a new YouTube channel that I've just started, and you can contact me from there as well. So if any questions, comments, concerns, I would love to hear from you, so let me know.

Yes, Hero is doing all the coolest things Eve, So listeners go check all of that out if you haven't already, of course, see all of the past amazing episodes of Female First, all of them worthy of an adaptation. And if you would like to contact us you can. You can email us at Hello at Stuffhendever Told You dot com or Stuff in your mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can find us on Blue Sky. I'm also a podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff one Never Told You. We have a YouTube page, we have a tea public store, and we have a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producer Christina or executive ducer my incontruder Joey. Thank you and thanks to you for listening. Stuff Never Told You is production by her Radio. For more podcasts on my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff Mom Never Told You

Through an intersectional feminist perspective, hosts Anney and Samantha dive into science, history, 
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