Breaking Ground: Helia Bravo Hollis and Her Beloved Cacti

September 30, 1901

Today we celebrate the birth of Helia Bravo Hollis, that most remarkable Queen of the Cacti, whose pioneering spirit broke ground not only for women in science but for our understanding of these fascinating desert dwellers.

Picture, if you will, this intrepid botanist, first woman to earn a biology degree in Mexico, standing beside a towering Echinocactus platyacanthus - knife in hand, dressed in a proper skirt and blazer - embodying both scientific precision and revolutionary determination.

By the tender age of 29, she had already assumed the prestigious role of curator at the National Autonomous University of Mexico's herbarium, where her passion for cacti would blossom into a lifelong obsession.

As she herself declared:

My reason for living is biology and cacti.

What extraordinary dedication she showed as director of the Botanical Gardens at UNAM throughout the 1960s!

When her garden workers faced hardship during a strike, she reached into her own savings to ensure their survival - a true gardener's understanding that people, like plants, require nurturing to thrive.

Her masterwork, Las Cactaceas de México, co-authored with Hernando Sánchez-Mejorada, stands as a testament to her scholarly devotion.

Yet perhaps her greatest legacy blooms in the Helia Bravo Hollis Botanical Garden, where over 80 species of Cactaceae continue her work of preservation and education.

How fitting that Princess Grace Kelly, herself an admirer of these spiny survivors, should present Helia with the Golden Cactus Award in 1980!

And how poetic that she should depart this world just four days shy of her centenary, as if nature herself had determined that 99 years and 361 days were sufficient to complete such a remarkable life's work.