THE TYPE LOCALITIES OF PLANTS FIRST 

 DESCRIBED FROM NEW MEXICO. 



By Paul C. Standley. 



INTRODUCTION. 



In the endeavor to settle the application of old names it is often 

 of the greatest advantage to know exactly where the specimens from 

 which a certain species was described were collected. This is dem- 

 onstrated by the difficulty experienced by botanists in determining 

 the proper reference of names based upon plants cultivated in botan- 

 ical gardens. With specimens from the type locality of a species one 

 can often supplement a scanty type much better than with specimens 

 that are apparently the same, but collected in other localities. When 

 a description is brief and imperfect and no type has been designated, 

 this is often the only method of interpreting the author's meaning. 



Unfortunately it is only lately that botanists have come to regard 

 the designation of types and type localities as important. The earlier 

 botanical writers did not consider the practice necessary, underesti- 

 mating the possible development of systematic botany. They were 

 accustomed to assign their new species to large and often indefinite 

 areas, such as "the eastern coast of North America," "Canada," 

 "west of the Mississippi River," and areas of similar extent. As a 

 result, when it has been found afterwards that there existed a group 

 of closely related species not known to the earlier writer, any of which 

 would fill the original description, it has often been extremely diffi- 

 cult to tell which member of the group was the basis of the proposed 

 name. 



Even when the early botanists cite a definite locality or region as 

 the source of their specimens it can not always be accepted implicitly 

 as the type locality, because of later changes in the application of 

 geographical names. Thus Linnaeus crediteil to Virginia, when 

 that State's territory was larger than at present, plants not known 

 now to occur within its boundaries; and by other writers Louisiana 

 is given as the source of plants collected hundreds of miles north of 

 the present boundaries of the State of that name. These conditions 

 make annotated lists of type localities like the present desirable. 



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