Margery C. Carlson

During their first multi-country trip in 1945-1946 that was funded by both Northwestern University and the Field Museum,[12] she and her life partner, Kate Staley, collected hundreds of pressed plant specimens and more than 100 living specimens were also returned from the trip, such as the White Nun orchid. For this trip, Carlson ended up being the first lead female expeditioner to ever travel to the mountains of El Salvador for a scientific project.[13][14] Returning from their expedition on April 11, 1936, the living orchids and 4,000 plant samples representing 1,200 species of plants were sent through customs in New Orleans and the living samples planted in the Northwestern University greenhouses for future propagation.[15]

Two years later beginning in December 1948 and extending into 1949, the pair conducted another trip, but without travel by plane or train, but by car for the entire trek. This botanical survey was funded by both Northwestern University and the Field Museum. They named their car El Caracol ("The Snail") due to how the back of the car was carrying everything they would need for the next six to nine months, their home "on its back". One of the main purposes of the trip was to find, photograph, and take samples of a new species of flower they had found on their prior expedition, but the photos of which had been lost and no sample had been taken at the time. Another purpose was to replace the White Nun orchid obtained in the 1946 trip, as many of the specimens from that time had been accidentally destroyed after a power failure in the university greenhouse during the middle of winter.[16] During their trip, on April 6, 1949, they discovered a new species of Tillandsia in Chiapas that would later be described by L.B. Smith and named Tillandsia carlsoniae.[4] In total, this second trip resulted in several thousand plant specimens collected, 300 of them living, and they were able to discover 15 new species of plants.[2]

Another trip was conducted from December 1951 to April 1952 and resulted in a collection of over 1,000 plant specimens and a number of new species, which were all donated to the Field Museum's botany collection.[17] This third expedition traveled to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, with the pair aiming to be the first recorded people to travel the entire stretch of Guatemala by car along the Pan-American Highway.[18] A significant portion of the three and a half month trip was spent in Chiapas, Mexico before moving through several countries to the cloud forests of Honduras. Five new species of ferns were catalogued there, along with an investigation into several mining sites along the route to look for fossilized plants at the request of botanists at the Field Museum.[19]

A fourth trip began in December 1954 in order to collect Russelia species and determine their distribution, growth characteristics, and where samples in the existing museum collections had been taken from. Carlson traced the origins of the plant throughout Mexico, focusing particularly on a canyon near Iguala where Russelia pringlei had been identified and named by Cyrus Pringle in 1906. The end of the trip continued on into El Salvador and Honduras following Russelia traces before she returned to the US in June 1955.[20]

Carlson would make numerous international trips throughout her career, involving the countries of Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. Of the plant family Bromeliaceae alone, she discovered 25 new species and 19 of them were found just within the region of Chiapas.[4] She retired in 1958 from being an active professor at Northwestern University, but remained working as a research assistant at the Field Museum and continued conducting collecting expeditions, primarily in Mexico.[4]

After the creation of a state park committee in December 1961 to advise governor Otto Kerner Jr. on how to keep up preservation efforts for the Illinois Beach State Park, Carlson was picked as one of the two members of her region to be on the ten person board.[21] Governor Kerner also added her to the board of the Illinois Youth Commission in 1964.[2]