When a species is described for the first time, the  author must invent a two-parted, latinized scientific name. The  genus (first part) is based on its genealogical relationship to  similar species; the specific epithet (second part) must be a unique,  unused name for a species within that genus. If a plant is named  to honor a person, it cannot be for the person describing the species-considered  self-aggrandizement-but can be named for a different person, e.g.,  the botanist who first collected the plant. Normally it is considered  a high honor to be the namesake of just one species or genus. Why  was Mildred Mathias honored six times?

The genus Mathiasella bupleuroideswas published  in 1954 by Lincoln Constance and C. Leo Hitchcock. First collected  in Tamaulipas, Mexico, this herbaceous perennial of the carrot family  (Apiaceae, also called umbellifers) possesses male flowers with  green and purple petals and female flowers lacking petals, both  types within a showy corolla-like involucre. The authors honored  Mildred for "her personal qualities, which have been an important  influence in promoting an attitude of friendly cooperation and good  will among botanists all over the United States"

(American Journal of Botany41: 56-58).

Sciadotenia mathiasiana(Menispermaceae) was  described in 1970 by her long-term friends Boris Krukoff and Rupert  Barneby, on the staff at the New York Botanical Garden. This is  a woody vine (liana) collected in the lowland Amazonian rain forest  of eastern Peru (Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 20(2): 1-70). Mildred had a special fondness for neotropical menisperms,  many of which are used by the forest tribes for folk medicines and  poisons. In 1981, she eventually coauthored a monograph on the menisperm  genus Hyperbaena with her former UCLA graduate student Bill Theobald  (Brittonia33: 81-104).

George C. Kennedy at the UCLA Institute of Geophysics  named the epiphytic orchid Lycaste mathiasiae(1978) for  a species collected by Mildred in Tinga Maria, Peru, back in 1962,  when she was doing ethnopharmacological research with Dermot Taylor

(Orchid Digest42: 59-61).

The most showy plant bearing her name is Heliconia  mathiasiae, originally described from Costa Rica and Nicaragua  by her former graduate student Gilbert S. Daniels and F. Gary Stiles  in 1979 as H. mathiasii (Brenesia 15 Supplement:  33), but later corrected for spelling. This species, a distant relative  of the banana, grows in closing light gaps and along rain forest  edges and is commonly seen at the La Selva Biological Station of  the Organization for Tropical Studies (OTS) in northeastern Costa  Rica Mildred was President of OTS from 1969-70, during its critical  formative years, and loved La Selva. Nearly every year from 1974  until her death, she traveled to La Selva with adult classes, to  teach about tropical biology and, surely, to show off her delightful  heliconia, which is one of the zingiberoid (ginger-like) types.  Since 1995, Professor Gibson has been part of a team doing research  on that and other species at La Selva. MEMBG has a living specimen  of H. mathiasiae

Stigmophyllon mathiasiae, again from Peru, is  a tropical liana of family Malpighiaceae named in 1981 by William  R. Anderson, noted authority on the family Boletim do Museu Botanica (Curitiba)

Closer to home, the latest addition to this list  (1983) was Eryngium mathiasiae, Mathias' button-celery, from the  Modoc Plateau of California. This very narrow endemic was described  by M. Yusuf Sheikh, who received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley studying  umbellifers under Lincoln Constance. "The species is named for Dr.  Mildred E. Mathias, Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of  California, Los Angeles, who has contributed greatly to the family  Umbelliferae, especially in the New World" (Madroño 30: 93-101).  This species is relatively uncommon in wet depressions and ditches.  Quite befitting, Mildred was very active in preserving rare and  endangered species, especially as a leader in The Nature Conservancy.

Mildred was very pleased with her "bouquet" of  plants, and proudly listed these on her curriculum vitae as special  honors. We should be pleased too.