182 ALLAN HANCOCK PACIFIC EXPEDITIONS VOL. 13 



JALISCO AND OAXACA 



Tenacatita Bay is a rather broad bay in the southernmost part of the 

 Mexican state of Jalisco not far from the Colima border, plate 13. So 

 far as I am aware, the collection of plants, made there by the Allan 

 Hancock Expedition in the Velero III in 1939, is the first. Jalisco, like 

 other Mexican states has been incompletely and intermittently collected. 

 One of the first botanists to collect in the state was Jose Mariano Mo- 

 cifio, who traveled through the state in the latter part of the eighteenth 

 century. About 100 years later in the 1890's, Cyrus Guernsey Pringle 

 made what are probably the largest Jaliscan collections. Two of his 

 more important localities were a barranca near Guadalajara and the 

 hills about Etzatlan. Rose, Standley, and others have since collected 

 along the railroad through the interior highland. The most important 

 collection in this century to date is that of Inez Mexia, made during the 

 last decade in the western mountains, where she discovered many new 

 plants. Except for Edward Palmer's important collections about the port 

 of Manzanillo, the coast flora has not been sampled, and the slopes of 

 the mountains facing the sea are quite untouched. 



The plants collected at Tenacatita Bay are therefore of interest for 

 the records they provide in the distribution of subtropical and tropical 

 American plants. A few of the species collected have not previously been 

 known in Jalisco. Taken in the tierra caliente zone, they are typical repre- 

 sentatives of the tropical drought-deciduous heterogeneous forest that ex- 

 tends along the Pacific Coast from Sinaloa to Costa Rica. It is unfor- 

 tunate that the expedition happened to visit this little known locality in 

 the month of May, because the dry season is then at its height and very 

 few of the plants are in a collectable or even recognizable condition. 

 Except for the riparian communities, the innumerable members of the 

 natural flora covering the hills and mountains are leafless and either rest- 

 ing or dormant. A few only fruit and flower during this pe/iod. The 

 whole great biota is in a kind of waiting for the summer rains, which 

 normally start in June. 



Chacagua Bay, Oaxaca, plate 13, is in southernmost Mexico and 

 although it is not a wet climate except for the summer months, it is 

 within the American tropics. Unlike Jalisco, the state of Oaxaca has had 

 the attentions of a resident botanist. Professor C. Conzatti of Ciudad 

 Oaxaca has long given the state special study. He classifies the region 

 around the littoral of Chacagua Bay as the ^'Subregion de la Costa y 

 Canada de Cuicatlan."* Although less accessible than Jalisco, Oaxaca 



*Las Regiones Botanico-Geograficas del Estado de Oaxaca. Presented at the 

 IV International Botanical Congress, Ithaca, New York. Printed by the author, C. 

 Conzatti, 1926, Oaxaca, Oaxaca. 



