168 CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE NATIONAL HERBARIUM. 



This is one of the few localities in New Mexico of whose spring flora 

 we have much knowledge. In most parts of the Territory the col- 

 lecting has been done during the late summer months. Fendler 

 remained in Santa Fe until August, gathering a large amount of 

 material from which Doctor Gray in Plantae Fendlerianae described 

 some of our commonest southwestern species. lie left Santa Fe so 

 early in the summer that he missed many plants he might have gotten 

 later, for plant life in the mountains of the Southwest reaches its best 

 only after the late summer rains, in August and September. Indeed, 

 it is of little use to go into the mountains for collecting before the first 

 of July. 



In 1897 Prof. A. A. Heller made a large collection in this same 

 region, with Santa Fe for his headquarters, collecting again many of 

 Fendler's species. He was at Santa Fe only during the early part 

 of the summer and, like Fendler, missed the season for best collecting. 

 Mr. G. R. Vasey, Mr. S. M. Tracy, Prof. T. D. A. Cockerell, and Mrs. 

 W. H. Bartlett are later botanists who have made small collections 

 at Santa Fe. In 1908 the writer collected some of Fendler's plants 

 in their original localities. No one, however, has ever collected at 

 Santa Fe late in the season, and many new species could probably 

 be added to the flora if collecting were done at this time. 



Santa Fe stands on a sandy plain which stretches westward for 

 about 20 miles to the Rio Grande. To the east rise the high peaks 

 of the Santa Fe Mountains, 3,600 to 3,900 meters high. The low 

 foothills, like the mesa, are a poor collecting ground, covered as they 

 are with juniper, cedar, pinon, cactus, and low shrubs, witli but a 

 scanty mantle of herbaceous plants. But after one has gone 10 or 12 

 miles eastward into the mountains he finds a luxuriant vegetation. 

 Santa Fe Creek, or River, as it is more commonly called, is a small 

 stream which comes down from the mountains through Santa Fe 

 Canyon and runs through the town, furnishing its water supply. It 

 was along this stream and on the plains about Santa Fe that Fendler 

 got most of his plants. He went as far west as the vallev of the Rio 

 Grande. Judging from the list given in Plantae Fendlerianae, per- 

 haps on account of the hostility of the Indians in 1847, he did not 

 venture more than 12 miles or so into the mountains, while if he had 

 gone farther he would have found hundreds of plants not in his collec- 

 tion. Fifteen or 20 miles away he would have found a subalpine 

 flora that would have been rich in plants then undescribed. 



Those plants that have their type localities at Santa Fe or in the 

 vicinity, the most of them first collected by Fendler, are as follows: 



A bronia fendleri. Aplopappus spinulosus eanescens. 



Actinella argentea. Arabia gracilenta. 



Actinella richardsonii Jloribunda. Arabis holboellii fendleri. 



Allionia diffusa. Aragallus pinetorum. 



Amaranthus braelensus. Archcmora fendleri. 



