﻿New Plants from New Mexico — I. 



By E. O. Wooton. 



A 



myself in central southern New Mexico collecting plants. Be- 

 tween June 14 and September 10 we traveled in a wagon from 

 Mesilla nearly to Fort Stanton and back, camping wherever it was 

 most convenient and collecting as we went. The country visited 

 is interesting botanically and a part of it has, so far as I know, 

 never been visited by any botanist except myself. 



The Mesilla Valley, in which now lie Las Cruces (" Crucis ") 

 Mesilla, Dona Ana and the ruins of old Fort Fillmore referred to 

 in the Botany of the Mexican Boundary Survey, is but a broad- 

 ening of the flood plain of the Rio Grande ; it is partly under culti- 

 vation and is composed partly of flats of more or less alkaline 

 adobe soil and partly of low sand hills. 



Twelve miles east of the valley and running nearly parallel to 

 it are the Organ Mountains visited in the early fifties by 

 Charles Wright and Dr. Bigelow. This range of mountains is 



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S"t aim XJi. AJigtiwn. i»« »"•"& 



narrow, rugged and precipitous, with little water and comparatively 

 few trees. 



East of the Organs (and their northern extension, the San 

 Andreas Mountains) lies an almost flat plain, fifty to sixty miles 

 wide and bounded on the eastern side by the Sacramento and 

 White Mountains. This plain is a treeless and apparently barren 

 stretch of mesa, lowest near the middle, where the altitude is 

 about 4000 feet above the sea level. 



The only water is very strongly alkaline and is found at three 

 wells near the middle of the plain and a few miles south of a very 

 peculiar and extensive deposit of gypsum known as the " White 

 Sands." 



The White Mountains are in Lincoln County almost due 

 northeast of the Organs and about ninety miles away. They 

 cover several hundred square miles of area, receive considerable 

 infall, ■ " * ' 



are 



heavy 



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