* 
WOOTON AND STANDLEY—NEW PLANTS FROM NEW MEXICO. 111 
of New Mexico is above one hundred and twenty thousand square 
miles, which is considerably more than the combined areas of New 
York and the New England States, and that the number of those 
who have collected extensively in the region is less than a dozen, it is 
clear that there remains a fertile field for exploration by those inter- 
ested in taxonomic botany. When new plants are stil] being found 
in New England, where for the past century or more hundreds of 
botanists and botanical collectors have been at work, it is evident 
that it will be many years before any botanist working in almost any 
part of New Mexico will fail to find plants that have not before been 
reported from the State. 
There has been published but a single flora covering any consider- 
able part of the great southwestern region, Coulter’s Botany of 
Western Texas, although Doctor Gray published several more or less 
extended papers dealing with various collections from New Mexico. 
The latter, however, were reports upon the collections of the earliest 
botanical explorers, who passed through the country hurriedly and 
were unable to visit the most interesting collecting grounds. Certain 
groups of southwestern plants have been treated in monographs, but 
the material from New Mexico examined by students heretofore has 
been scant and often imperfect. Hence, as might be expected, an 
attempt to write a complete flora of New Mexico in the light of 
abundant material has found the taxonomy of our plants in an alinost 
chaotic condition. This is particularly true of those groups which 
have not been monographed recently. The number of plants here 
described as new is thus rather large. The diagnoses published in 
the present paper, however, include practically all undescribed species 
found by us while working upon the flora of the State. 
The manuscript for the proposed New Mexican flora is nearly com- 
pleted and, it is expected, will be published shortly. It is deemed 
advisable for several reasons to issue the descriptions of the new spe- 
cies in advance of the complete work. A state flora in its usual form 
is bulky enough with the material that it must contain without being 
burdened with pages of descriptions of new plants. Moreover, the 
amateur in botanical work, for whose use a flora is chiefly intended, 
is likely, unless all the species are described therein, to have his atten- 
tion attracted especially to those plants of which he finds descriptions 
and to strive unduly to associate his specimens with those species. 
The insertion of occasional diagnoses destroys the uniformity of a 
work also and seems to us in every way undesirable. 
The descriptions published here are arranged by families in their 
natural order, the genera and species in most cases being in alpha- 
betical sequence. Most of the species discussed are from the southern 
part of the State, where less botanical work has been done than else- 
where. Not a few, however, are from the northern part. The latter 
