Early achievement

At the age of 21, Lundell was a sophomore

Sophomore

Sophomore is a term used in the United States to describe a student in the second year of study at high school or university.The word is also used as a synonym for "second", for the second album or EP released by a musician or group, the second movie of a director, or the second season of a...

 at Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University

Southern Methodist University is a private university in Dallas, Texas, United States. Founded in 1911 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, SMU operates campuses in Dallas, Plano, and Taos, New Mexico. SMU is owned by the South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church...

 (SMU). He was appointed assistant physiologist at the Tropical Plant Research Foundation in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

  He was to assist in British Honduras

British Honduras

British Honduras was a British colony that is now the independent nation of Belize.First colonised by Spaniards in the 17th century, the territory on the east coast of Central America, south of Mexico, became a British crown colony from 1862 until 1964, when it became self-governing. Belize became...

, with experiments on the sapodilla

Sapodilla

Manilkara zapota, commonly known as the sapodilla, is a long-lived, evergreen tree native to southern Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. An example natural occurrence is in coastal Yucatan in the Petenes mangroves ecoregion, where it is a subdominant plant species...

 tree (Achras zapota), which yields chicle

Chicle

Manilkara chicle is a tropical evergreen tree native to Mexico and Central America. The tree ranges from Veracruz in Mexico south to Atlántico in Colombia...

, for the U.S. chewing gum

Chewing gum

Chewing gum is a type of gum traditionally made of chicle, a natural latex product, or synthetic rubber known as polyisobutylene. For economical and quality reasons, many modern chewing gums use rubber instead of chicle...

 industry.

Chicle

Chicle

Chicle

Manilkara chicle is a tropical evergreen tree native to Mexico and Central America. The tree ranges from Veracruz in Mexico south to Atlántico in Colombia...

 is the natural gum from Manilkara chicle, a tropical evergreen tree native to southern North America and South America. It was traditionally used in chewing gum. While the Wrigley Company

Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company

The William Wrigley Jr. Company is a company headquartered in the Wrigley Building in Near North Side, Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded on April 1, 1891, originally selling products such as soap and baking powder. In 1892, William Wrigley, Jr., the company's founder, began packaging...

 was a prominent user of this material, today there are only a few companies that still make chewing gum from natural chicle.

Work

Lundell's work was a combination of conservation and economics. He was interested in the Maya

Maya civilization

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as for its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period The Maya is a Mesoamerican...

 culture and archaeology as well as botany. While working for the Tropical Plant Research Foundation in 1931, he discovered the Maya city of Calakmul

Calakmul

Calakmul is a Maya archaeological site in the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the greater Petén Basin region. It is from the Guatemalan border. Calakmul was one of the largest and most powerful ancient cities ever uncovered in the Maya lowlands...

, which had been hidden in the jungle for 1000 years. He discovered and identified more than 2,000 plants, many of them Texas natives.

Burial

Cyrus Longworth Lundell is buried at Sparkman-Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...

.