Buck was born Margaret Warriner in New York, New York, in 1857. She studied art at Yale Art School before moving to San Francisco in 1891. She gained a reputation as a botanical artist and specialist in depicting California wildflowers. In the 1890s, she and writer
Mary Elizabeth Parsons hiked around California with an eye to publishing a book about California flora. The result was the very successful
The Wild Flowers of California: Their Names, Haunts, and Habits (1897), written by Parsons with over 100 illustrations engraved from Buck's pen-and-ink drawings. It went through many printings and several editions and was still being reprinted into the 1950s. After the
San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, she worked for
Sunset magazine. She died in
San Rafael, California, in 1929. ==References==