Hayden--the prairie conservationist
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Throughout her career, Ada Hayden could often be seen throwing a johnboat on top of her car. She would strap it on and drive to the lakes of Northern Iowa to do her field work. Iowa State Botanist Lois Tiffany, who was an undergraduate in the late 1940.s, remembers this.
"She was so intensely interested in her work," said Tiffany. "I think she probably had to fight for everything she got."
Hayden was the first woman to get a doctorate at Iowa State in 1918. She was on the faculty in the Botany department from 1920 to 1950. She did floristics—the study of plants in a certain area. Her work in Northern Iowa may be the most authoritative for any part of the state. In 1934 she became curator of the Iowa State herbarium adding 30,000 specimens to the collection throughout her career.
But her work as a conservationist to save the prairies of Iowa often goes unnoticed.
"As important as the herbarium is, the preservation of the prairies is even greater," said Lynn Clark, professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology and the director of the Ada Hayden Herbarium. "We wouldn't have even the little bit of prairie land that we have today if it weren't for her. No one else was pushing that."
Hayden grew up on a farm near Ames surrounded by prairies. The story goes that Louis H. Pammel was giving a talk to Hayden's high school class when he noticed a bouquet containing pasque-flowers on the teacher's desk. He inquired about them and the teacher presented Ada, who had picked them. They talked, he recognized her talent and became a huge influence on her life. For the first half of her career she contributed greatly to his publications.
She wrote the first call to save the prairies in a paper in 1919. Deborah Lewis, curator of the Ada Hayden Herbarium and informal biographer of Hayden, said it is suspected that she put down this conservation effort for reasons related to Pammel who worked closely with farmers.
In 1940 Hayden received a $100 grant from the Iowa Academy of Sciences to survey the remaining prairie areas. She traveled throughout the state and selected 22 as the best examples of various kinds of prairies in Iowa. But that was not the end, said Lewis.
"She pushed it. She was interviewed on the radio, gave public lectures, she even hand colored a set of the old lantern slides so they were pretty, to impress people as she gave her talks," Lewis said.
Throughout her career she was never promoted past assistant professor—a sign not of her vigorous work, but of the time. Three prairies had been purchased for conservation by the time she died in 1950, one of them a 240 acre swath of prairie land in Howard County, named for her. Hayden herself described this prairie in 1946 as, "...An impressive sweep of rolling country may be seen. A colorful panorama of flowering plants occurs throughout the growing season."
