Margery Claire Carlson (November 21, 1892 – July 5, 1985)^[1] was an American botanist and a professor at Northwestern University. After earning a Ph.D. in botany and becoming the first full-time female professor at Northwestern, she went on a number of international scientific expeditions to Central America in order to collect plant specimens and find new species. Her relationship as a research assistant at the Field Museum of Natural History meant that a majority of her plant collection was donated to the museum and a special botany collection was created for her there. Carlson had a long history of involvement in the conservation movement and was honored with multiple awards, along with a nature preserve being named after her.

Carlson was born in Arthur, Illinois. Her parents, John E. Carlson and Nellie Marie Johnson, named her after the marguerite daisy.^[1][2] She graduated with a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1916 before earning a Master's degree and then a Ph.D. in botany by 1925 from the University of Wisconsin.^[2] Beginning in 1927, she worked in the research department at the University of Wisconsin.^[3] Carlson afterward became a teacher at Wellesley College before returning to Northwestern University in 1930 to become a professor, where she would stay for the next three decades before retiring in the 1960s.^[2][4]

She was the first woman to major in botany at Northwestern and the first woman to become a full professor at the university.^[5] Carlson also acted as a research assistant at the Field Museum for the specimens that she collected and the full collection they were a part of.^[5]

Carlson's botany research starting from 1927 focused on the development of orchids, including discovering ways to grow them in varied climates.^[6] She was able to create cultivars of domesticated orchids with reduced growing times thanks to the specialized feeding solution she devised.^[7] Beginning in 1933, she began researching ways of rapidly cultivating the grass pink orchid found on the shore of Lake Michigan. There was a large market for its close relative, the tropical orchid, but due to it only growing in a tropical climate and taking seven years to reach maturity, the species was in short supply and extremely expensive to obtain.^[8]

Carlson announced in October 1936 that she had succeeded in figuring out the cultivation method for the grass pink orchid, reducing its germination to flowering time period to only three years, and would have cheap seeds and bulbs available for the public soon after. She also moved her research focus onto accomplishing the same with the lady slipper orchid due to its population decreasing so much that it was at risk in many US states.^[9][10]

As a practicing botanist, Carlson made frequent trips to Mexico and Central America to search and catalog plant species in the regions. In a 1940 paper, Carlson described the first finding of a special type of seed coat found only in a few orchid species and surrounding the plant embryo. She described this as a "covering of the embryo" or an "inner seed coat".^[11]

Carlson was a founder of the Illinois Chapter of the Nature Conservancy.^[5] In the 1960s, a wildflower garden in Evanston, Illinois's Lighthouse Park was named after her.^[2] An official nature preserve was named after her in 1976, with the "Margery C. Carlson Nature Preserve" being in LaSalle County.^[5][22]

She was awarded the Eloise Payne Luquer Medal in 1952^[23] and the Sarah Gildersleeve Fife Memorial Award in 1954, both from the Garden Club of America.^[1] The organization Graduate Women in Science made her an honorary member in 1978^[24] and later named a fellowship award after Carlson titled the "Margery Carlson & Kate Staley Memorial Fellowship".^[25]

Carlson lived in Evanston, Illinois with her partner Kate Staley, a former physiologist who had retired and accompanied Carlson on many of her expeditions.^[17] She was a member of the Sigma Delta Epsilon fraternity for women in science and acted as secretary for the national branch.^[26]

She was an active conservationist and promoter of protecting wilderness in Illinois. Carlson was made an adviser for the Evanston Garden Club and herself joined a number of professional organizations related to botany and environmental organizations in the area. Her conservation efforts focused on areas such as Volo Bog, Illinois State Beach, and Matthiessen State Park.^[4]

• Morphological and Cytological Studies of Saprolegnia Sp. (1920), University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Gametogenesis and fertilization in Achlya racemosa (1929), University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Monograph of the Genus Russelia (Scrophulariaceae) (1957), Field Museum of Natural History

The standard author abbreviation Carlson is used to indicate this person as the author when citing a botanical name.^[27]