Cyrus Longworth Lundell

Lundell served as a professor of botany at Southern Methodist University, where he also founded the SMU Herbarium. During his career, he wrote widely – contributing to over 200 scientific and popular papers, describing roughly 2000 plant species, and authoring Flora of Texas (1942). He also founded the botanical journal, Wrightia, and sponsored publication of the Manual of Vascular Plants of Texas (1970), by Donovan Correll and Marshall Johnston. In 1944, he became active in efforts to save the depleted Texas blacklands, establishing the Institute of Technology and Plant Industry at SMU, later chartered as the non-profit Texas Research Foundation, where he was Chief Research Scientist. While exploring Central American flora during the 1930s and ’40s, he found 450 plants, including the parents of squash, pinto beans, chili peppers and cocoa, discovered 16 Mayan cities, including Calakmul and Polol, and took home lessons of the link between the decline of Central American ecosystems and the collapse of the Mayan civilization.