December 24, 2025 • 50 mins
Ynés Mexía lived a life full of adventure and full of turning points. Yves joins us to share the story of the pioneering botanist in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Okay, this is Anny and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to stuff I Never told you production by
her video.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Okay, so it's my turn pick out a classic, and
of course I'm going to start out with Female First
with Eves, who we love because she just brings us
so many different types of women. And one of my
favorites this year was INA's Mahea, who was one of
the I think maybe only.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Buttonists that we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah, for the Female First, I'm trying to remember, but
it was such just hearing about her introvertedness and her
adventures and finding new species was one of my favorite things.
To imagine it being a movie. I think we in
so many episodes with Eves talking about that specifically, and
Mayhea really felt like her biography should be somehow a movie.
(01:02):
So would that please enjoy one of my favorites for
this classic. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm welcome to stuff I've Never told you prolection if
I 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 fucome Ese. Hey, you
(01:36):
just reminded me that we haven't seen you since New
Year's and I had I had a little bit of
a moment.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's true. It's true. Well, how how was New Year's
for you? How has the New Year been?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
The New Year has been good? Honestly, I know it's
a whole thing, you know, refresh restart. People arguing about
whether it's a real restarts the middle of winter, YadA, YadA, YadA,
so far 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,
(02:27):
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
a thing 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,
(02:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Samantha asked me about the New Year, and I was like,
it's like it just passed me by.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I 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.
(03:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The thing is the thing about that though other people
are excited for us too, Like so, I was talking
to someone recently who doesn't even live here, she lives
on the other side of the country. She 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.
Don't know if you' all saw the shenanigans on online
(04:03):
or on the news, but I mean if you haven't,
you will probably get a good kick out of that.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Skiing down streets.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, we saw lots of that, people trying to slid
and they weren't really bad at it, like so many
things people doing like yeah, well, I was trying to
skip that one because I like that it's not something
we want to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
But they were having a good time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
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
(04:57):
climate experiences happening and I'm not allowed at that 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.
Uh but yeah, but my New Year's I just realized
(05:20):
that we were just all in the point of being
the adults who are like, we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Maybe it was COVID, maybe it is age.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
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 crew. I
don't 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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Reserved for this. You want you're not gonna want to
miss the countdown for the see any.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We're tired, we're tired. We're all tired, apparently, but.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It was nice to not do things.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And I went to bed immediately at twelve fifteen. I'm
pretty sure.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh well, I have to say I was very 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?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
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 killed them,
and I've had I have family members who are really
sable good at it, but plants. I didn't grow up
around plants either, so unfortunately, house plants or you know,
(06:55):
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
(07:19):
have no plants now, so that now that i've you know,
i've I 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.
(07:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Little bit over? Do we really have to be that
melodramatic here?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I get it.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
You have had too much water and I've done too much.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
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 sting 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.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Me over count well, then you foind out that the
colorful flowers is the death blue.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
This is good, you pretty, but that's not supposed to happen.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Use 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.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
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
(09:01):
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 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, new you. Amy, don't
(09:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I did not didn't mean to set some kind of trap.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I really did.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well. I am so so excited to talk about this
story of the person brought today.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Eves. Who are we talking about today? We're talking about
Inez Mehia. 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,
(10:24):
but she did know a lot about plants. She collected
a lot of plants, She had her hands on a
lot of plants. She she studied a lot of plants.
So she 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
(10:46):
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 Inez Mahia actually went
on of these fantastic travels where she was like very
sufficient in the way that she was interacting with the world.
(11:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yes. So her name was enez 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
(11:56):
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
(12:16):
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,
(12:41):
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 own
older sister, adel and they did do some gatherings and
(13:04):
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
(13:26):
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
(13:49):
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 Es took
over the ranching business. So just a reminder, she was
(14:12):
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.
(14:36):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:19):
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
(15:40):
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
(16:01):
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
(16:24):
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,
(16:47):
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 is it. Well, I can't say it worked per se.
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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,
(17:52):
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 if I 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. It's like
kind of a very sweet point I feel like in
a life story, because so many times things that can
(18:15):
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
(18:36):
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
(18:58):
a direction that felt really feeling 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
(19:22):
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
(19:46):
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 acknowledge right now what we're
(20:10):
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.
(20:30):
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 Inez before the wildfires started happening. But
(20:53):
it feels pretty prescient 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 remiss to not mention that the wildfires
in California are happening, and if people have resources that
(21:15):
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,
(21:38):
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
(22:01):
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 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,
(22:22):
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.
(22:46):
In her story of how she was like, I want
to study. I'm interested in this, So I'm gonna 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. Now I'm
gonna do it. I'm going to be that person. It
was just I'm interested in natural history. It's been enlivened
(23:09):
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 to enez. Inez
(23:30):
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
(23:54):
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
(24:14):
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
(24:37):
getting into botany, she was just starting to go on
collecting trips is her first time. She realized that early on.
So she started traveling in the area around Mazatline on
her own and collecting, but she needed a guide, and
a local helped her out. And this is the point
(25:00):
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.
(25:20):
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
(25:45):
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,
(26:06):
like she was very pioneering in what she chose to
go 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
(26:27):
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
(26:49):
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 isn't the end of her story, y'all,
like many more years.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Okay, right, sorry, no, this is not.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
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
(27:37):
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
(28:00):
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,
(28:22):
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 pack animals and a lot of times she
(28:44):
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.
(29:09):
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.
(29:32):
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
(29:53):
that she was seeing along the way, and she said
the wild fig tree Ficus mexicanomic here grows to huge
purport as the green fruit hung high, Maro deftly lassoed
some fruiting branches. For me, appreciate that instance of her
talking about the guide and clearly how he's used to
(30:14):
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
(30:34):
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
(30:55):
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 in a
way as if there were savages, he was expecting to
be them to be savages, and when they weren't that
was a surprise for her. That seemed like that was
(31:15):
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,
(31:36):
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 she would 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.
(31:56):
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 the young
botanist named Frances Paine, but another situation in which she
was like, I think I need to do this on
my own because she's slow me down. So she kind
of left France's pain behind, and she was venturing into
(32:18):
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
(32:39):
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. Sure if I included that in
(33:01):
this conversation, but I thought back about this situation, I'm like,
I feel like this counts as you getting lost lost laws.
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
(33:22):
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
(33:44):
and their relationship was very key in Inez's legacy because
Inez would collect and Nina was short in process, so
Inez wasn't really into the short 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 will
(34:07):
also handle paperwork and raising money, so the adventures are numerous.
Nina spent time living collecting in Brazil. She traveled up
to 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.
(34:31):
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
(34:52):
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 and has ended up going
all over South America over the rest of her life,
you know, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, collecting plants dedicated to
(35:16):
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,
(35:38):
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 great bad? I feel like a little
(36:00):
shaky on the lost thing, So maybe she didn't make
it to her campsite, but she had to be pulled out.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
She made it out. Maybe that's what she meant.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, 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.
(36:32):
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
(36:54):
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
(37:14):
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
(37:39):
her life, she injured herself in a fall. I think
she slipped when she was going across the 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
(38:00):
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
(38:25):
California Academy of Sciences were her long time you know collaborator,
Nina Bracelin, who's also called Bracy, so she could keep
working at the California Academy of Sciences on Yez's collections
and on other plant collections. So she allowed her money
helped fund Nina to be able to continue working. She
(38:47):
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 five thousand
(39:08):
to one hundred and fifty thousand 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
(39:31):
is one in the z Mahia Botanical Collections at the
University of California, Berkeley that people can access. They were
connected 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 an interview with her,
and in it you can read the whole thing. But
(39:52):
in it she talks about how Es stabbed a grad student.
So in the rundown there was a grad student who
was essentially teasing ENA's a little bit. They were out
for lunch, like eating sandwiches, and Nina said, quote, she
reached at her with a great big knife and jabbed
(40:15):
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
(40:37):
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 seemed 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,
(40:57):
nothing about wound dressing or anti septics or whatever you
call it. And you need to be able to deal
with this wound instead, just these by the girl, some stockings.
She can't afford this.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Those are nice like silk, right like during that time
they were expensive.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
They must have been, Samantha, I say. 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
(41:36):
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 could
could handle it up with Yeah, exactly. So I'm wondering
about Inez's character and was she kind of a this
(41:58):
is me trying to put a character together who I
didn't know. But it's like, well, she spent so much
time around plants and in the outdoors. 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
(42:19):
she was going to that could help her work. So
these were people who were 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
(42:39):
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.
(42:59):
She's like, no standing on business. I got 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 readarrested in that if you want to. Inez
(43:21):
also published notes from and accounts from her travels and
different publications. She was a member of the California Botanical Society,
the Sierra Club, the Autobon 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
(43:44):
and Europe. And Annezza'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
(44:05):
like and think that and say that I have an
adventure spirit. I 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 really enjoyed In as a story. Definitely complexities
(44:27):
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 In as a story. Yes, completely agree.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I mean we say it every time, but I don't
know why there's not a miniseries.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
On this woman's life. This is falling off a cliff
where I.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Can get it at all. Violence and adventure romance and
the death of kind.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Come on, Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Woman who like hates other people but loves plants, Like
she had a.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Huge turning point.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Maybe it was a midlife crisis where he was like,
I'm gonna need you to go out because you might
have 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
(45:32):
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 why it kind of
sounds like finding herself. It's like love, prey, eat but
(45:52):
not but plants, right.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
And how that goes movie, by the way, I don't.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Even know.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I got your point.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, it's also really fascinating to me. I also feel
like I have an adventurous spirit, but 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.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
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,
(46:58):
so that that doesn't help.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Honestly, you probably stepped on a plant that was probably
very precious at some point.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
This is this is your revenge for me trying to
trick you in being a plant mom.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
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 gone now. Yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
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
(47:52):
like a fascinating, complex character.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
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 inciting incident, you got the turning point,
you know, you got the hero's journeys traveling. I mean,
come on, yeah, so maybe maybe y'all should y'all should
(48:17):
be the ones to champion talking about this every time
we have.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
IV.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I'm glad to be here. Thanks y'all.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Y'all can find me. The easiest way is to go
to my website. That's Eves Jeffcote 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
(49:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yes, hero Is do it all the coolest things use
sales listeners. Go check all 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.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
And if you would like to contact does you can.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
You can email us at Hello at stuff onever Told
You dot com or Stuffanie Mom stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky at mom Stuff
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 Christenior, Executiveroducer, My Incontruder, Joey, thank you,
(50:22):
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff Never Told Me
is production by Heart Radio forur podcasts on my heart Radio.
You can check out the Heart Radio ap Apple podcast
or where you listen to your favorite shows
Okay, this is Anny and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm welcome to stuff I Never told you production by
her video.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Okay, so it's my turn pick out a classic, and
of course I'm going to start out with Female First
with Eves, who we love because she just brings us
so many different types of women. And one of my
favorites this year was INA's Mahea, who was one of
the I think maybe only.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Buttonists that we've talked about.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Yeah, for the Female First, I'm trying to remember, but
it was such just hearing about her introvertedness and her
adventures and finding new species was one of my favorite things.
To imagine it being a movie. I think we in
so many episodes with Eves talking about that specifically, and
Mayhea really felt like her biography should be somehow a movie.
(01:02):
So would that please enjoy one of my favorites for
this classic. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I'm welcome to stuff I've Never told you prolection if
I 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 fucome Ese. Hey, you
(01:36):
just reminded me that we haven't seen you since New
Year's and I had I had a little bit of
a moment.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
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.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
It's true. It's true. Well, how how was New Year's
for you? How has the New Year been?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
The New Year has been good? Honestly, I know it's
a whole thing, you know, refresh restart. People arguing about
whether it's a real restarts the middle of winter, YadA, YadA, YadA,
so far 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,
(02:27):
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
a thing 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,
(02:47):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Samantha asked me about the New Year, and I was like,
it's like it just passed me by.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
I 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.
(03:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
The thing is the thing about that though other people
are excited for us too, Like so, I was talking
to someone recently who doesn't even live here, she lives
on the other side of the country. She 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.
Don't know if you' all saw the shenanigans on online
(04:03):
or on the news, but I mean if you haven't,
you will probably get a good kick out of that.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
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.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Skiing down streets.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, we saw lots of that, people trying to slid
and they weren't really bad at it, like so many
things people doing like yeah, well, I was trying to
skip that one because I like that it's not something
we want to celebrate.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
But they were having a good time.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
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
(04:57):
climate experiences happening and I'm not allowed at that 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.
Uh but yeah, but my New Year's I just realized
(05:20):
that we were just all in the point of being
the adults who are like, we don't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Maybe it was COVID, maybe it is age.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
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 crew. I
don't 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.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Reserved for this. You want you're not gonna want to
miss the countdown for the see any.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
We're tired, we're tired. We're all tired, apparently, but.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It was nice to not do things.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
And I went to bed immediately at twelve fifteen. I'm
pretty sure.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Oh well, I have to say I was very 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?
Speaker 1 (06:34):
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 killed them,
and I've had I have family members who are really
sable good at it, but plants. I didn't grow up
around plants either, so unfortunately, house plants or you know,
(06:55):
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
(07:19):
have no plants now, so that now that i've you know,
i've I 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.
(07:41):
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.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Little bit over? Do we really have to be that
melodramatic here?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I get it.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
You have had too much water and I've done too much.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
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 sting 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.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Me over count well, then you foind out that the
colorful flowers is the death blue.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
This is good, you pretty, but that's not supposed to happen.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Use 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.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
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
(09:01):
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 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, new you. Amy, don't
(09:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
I did not didn't mean to set some kind of trap.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I really did.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Well. I am so so excited to talk about this
story of the person brought today.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Eves. Who are we talking about today? We're talking about
Inez Mehia. 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,
(10:24):
but she did know a lot about plants. She collected
a lot of plants, She had her hands on a
lot of plants. She she studied a lot of plants.
So she 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
(10:46):
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 Inez Mahia actually went
on of these fantastic travels where she was like very
sufficient in the way that she was interacting with the world.
(11:09):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yes. So her name was enez 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
(11:56):
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
(12:16):
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,
(12:41):
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 own
older sister, adel and they did do some gatherings and
(13:04):
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
(13:26):
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
(13:49):
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 Es took
over the ranching business. So just a reminder, she was
(14:12):
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.
(14:36):
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
(14:57):
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
(15:19):
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
(15:40):
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
(16:01):
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
(16:24):
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,
(16:47):
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 is it. Well, I can't say it worked per se.
(17:10):
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
(17:31):
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,
(17:52):
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 if I 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. It's like
kind of a very sweet point I feel like in
a life story, because so many times things that can
(18:15):
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
(18:36):
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
(18:58):
a direction that felt really feeling 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
(19:22):
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
(19:46):
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 acknowledge right now what we're
(20:10):
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.
(20:30):
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 Inez before the wildfires started happening. But
(20:53):
it feels pretty prescient 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 remiss to not mention that the wildfires
in California are happening, and if people have resources that
(21:15):
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,
(21:38):
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
(22:01):
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 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,
(22:22):
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.
(22:46):
In her story of how she was like, I want
to study. I'm interested in this, So I'm gonna 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. Now I'm
gonna do it. I'm going to be that person. It
was just I'm interested in natural history. It's been enlivened
(23:09):
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 to enez. Inez
(23:30):
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
(23:54):
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
(24:14):
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
(24:37):
getting into botany, she was just starting to go on
collecting trips is her first time. She realized that early on.
So she started traveling in the area around Mazatline on
her own and collecting, but she needed a guide, and
a local helped her out. And this is the point
(25:00):
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.
(25:20):
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
(25:45):
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,
(26:06):
like she was very pioneering in what she chose to
go 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
(26:27):
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
(26:49):
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 isn't the end of her story, y'all,
like many more years.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
Okay, right, sorry, no, this is not.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
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
(27:37):
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
(28:00):
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,
(28:22):
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 pack animals and a lot of times she
(28:44):
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.
(29:09):
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.
(29:32):
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
(29:53):
that she was seeing along the way, and she said
the wild fig tree Ficus mexicanomic here grows to huge
purport as the green fruit hung high, Maro deftly lassoed
some fruiting branches. For me, appreciate that instance of her
talking about the guide and clearly how he's used to
(30:14):
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
(30:34):
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
(30:55):
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 in a
way as if there were savages, he was expecting to
be them to be savages, and when they weren't that
was a surprise for her. That seemed like that was
(31:15):
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,
(31:36):
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 she would 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.
(31:56):
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 the young
botanist named Frances Paine, but another situation in which she
was like, I think I need to do this on
my own because she's slow me down. So she kind
of left France's pain behind, and she was venturing into
(32:18):
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
(32:39):
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. Sure if I included that in
(33:01):
this conversation, but I thought back about this situation, I'm like,
I feel like this counts as you getting lost lost laws.
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
(33:22):
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
(33:44):
and their relationship was very key in Inez's legacy because
Inez would collect and Nina was short in process, so
Inez wasn't really into the short 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 will
(34:07):
also handle paperwork and raising money, so the adventures are numerous.
Nina spent time living collecting in Brazil. She traveled up
to 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.
(34:31):
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
(34:52):
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 and has ended up going
all over South America over the rest of her life,
you know, Ecuador, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, collecting plants dedicated to
(35:16):
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,
(35:38):
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 great bad? I feel like a little
(36:00):
shaky on the lost thing, So maybe she didn't make
it to her campsite, but she had to be pulled out.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
She made it out. Maybe that's what she meant.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, 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.
(36:32):
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
(36:54):
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
(37:14):
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
(37:39):
her life, she injured herself in a fall. I think
she slipped when she was going across the 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
(38:00):
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
(38:25):
California Academy of Sciences were her long time you know collaborator,
Nina Bracelin, who's also called Bracy, so she could keep
working at the California Academy of Sciences on Yez's collections
and on other plant collections. So she allowed her money
helped fund Nina to be able to continue working. She
(38:47):
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 five thousand
(39:08):
to one hundred and fifty thousand 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
(39:31):
is one in the z Mahia Botanical Collections at the
University of California, Berkeley that people can access. They were
connected 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 an interview with her,
and in it you can read the whole thing. But
(39:52):
in it she talks about how Es stabbed a grad student.
So in the rundown there was a grad student who
was essentially teasing ENA's a little bit. They were out
for lunch, like eating sandwiches, and Nina said, quote, she
reached at her with a great big knife and jabbed
(40:15):
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
(40:37):
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 seemed 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,
(40:57):
nothing about wound dressing or anti septics or whatever you
call it. And you need to be able to deal
with this wound instead, just these by the girl, some stockings.
She can't afford this.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Those are nice like silk, right like during that time
they were expensive.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
They must have been, Samantha, I say. 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
(41:36):
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 could
could handle it up with Yeah, exactly. So I'm wondering
about Inez's character and was she kind of a this
(41:58):
is me trying to put a character together who I
didn't know. But it's like, well, she spent so much
time around plants and in the outdoors. 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
(42:19):
she was going to that could help her work. So
these were people who were 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
(42:39):
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.
(42:59):
She's like, no standing on business. I got 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 readarrested in that if you want to. Inez
(43:21):
also published notes from and accounts from her travels and
different publications. She was a member of the California Botanical Society,
the Sierra Club, the Autobon 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
(43:44):
and Europe. And Annezza'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
(44:05):
like and think that and say that I have an
adventure spirit. I 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 really enjoyed In as a story. Definitely complexities
(44:27):
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 In as a story. Yes, completely agree.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
I mean we say it every time, but I don't
know why there's not a miniseries.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
On this woman's life. This is falling off a cliff
where I.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
Can get it at all. Violence and adventure romance and
the death of kind.
Speaker 1 (45:03):
Come on, Yeah, a.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
Woman who like hates other people but loves plants, Like
she had a.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Huge turning point.
Speaker 3 (45:10):
Maybe it was a midlife crisis where he was like,
I'm gonna need you to go out because you might
have 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
(45:32):
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 why it kind of
sounds like finding herself. It's like love, prey, eat but
(45:52):
not but plants, right.
Speaker 1 (45:55):
And how that goes movie, by the way, I don't.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Even know.
Speaker 1 (46:07):
I got your point.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Well, it's also really fascinating to me. I also feel
like I have an adventurous spirit, but 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.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
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,
(46:58):
so that that doesn't help.
Speaker 1 (47:00):
Honestly, you probably stepped on a plant that was probably
very precious at some point.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
This is this is your revenge for me trying to
trick you in being a plant mom.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
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 gone now. Yeah, unfortunately.
Speaker 2 (47:32):
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
(47:52):
like a fascinating, complex character.
Speaker 1 (47:57):
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 inciting incident, you got the turning point,
you know, you got the hero's journeys traveling. I mean,
come on, yeah, so maybe maybe y'all should y'all should
(48:17):
be the ones to champion talking about this every time
we have.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
IV.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
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.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
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.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
I'm glad to be here. Thanks y'all.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
Where can the good listeners find you?
Speaker 1 (49:05):
Y'all can find me. The easiest way is to go
to my website. That's Eves Jeffcote 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
(49:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (49:42):
Yes, hero Is do it all the coolest things use
sales listeners. Go check all 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.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
And if you would like to contact does you can.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
You can email us at Hello at stuff onever Told
You dot com or Stuffanie Mom stuff at iHeartMedia dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky at mom Stuff
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 Christenior, Executiveroducer, My Incontruder, Joey, thank you,
(50:22):
and thanks to you for listening. Stuff Never Told Me
is production by Heart Radio forur podcasts on my heart Radio.
You can check out the Heart Radio ap Apple podcast
or where you listen to your favorite shows
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Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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