Mary Beal (1878–1964) was a pioneering botanist who spent most of her life in Daggett, California, living at the ranch of local judge Dix Van Dyke. Though an amateur botanist, she was praised by Willis Linn Jepson for her excellent botanical specimens, and many of these were kept by the

University and Jepson Herbaria The University and Jepson Herbaria are two herbaria that share a joint facility at the University of California, Berkeley holding over 2,200,000 botanical specimens, the largest such collection on the US West Coast. These botanical natural histo ...

to this day. She wrote a regular botany column for the ''

Desert Magazine ''Desert Magazine'' was a monthly regional publication based in the Colorado Desert published between 1937 and 1985. A print version bearing the same name has been revived in the Coachella Valley town of Palm Desert near Palm Springs, California. ...

'' from 1939 to 1953. Back issues of this publication are available online today through ''Desert Magazine''. A trail at the Mojave National Preserve commemorates her life and contribution to Mojave Desert botany. Some of her papers are held at the Mojave Desert Heritage and Cultural Association and some of her paintings of Mojave Desert flowers are held at the Mojave River Valley Museum in Barstow, California. Other papers and plant specimens are held at the archives of the

at the University of California, Berkeley.

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Video showing location of Mary Beal's grave
1878 births 1964 deaths 20th-century American botanists Place of birth missing 20th-century American women scientists {{botanist-stub