to#'>#« 



CONTRIBUTIONS TO WESTEPvN BOTANY NO. "lo "^^^^ 



while. Now where does tWs very rare plant really grow? The ^ type 

 locality is on the western slopes of the Beaverdam mountains, Arizona/ in 

 the Larrea (Covillea) belt, sloping mesas. It does not grow so 'far: a.s 

 we know in Utah. Near Moapa, Nevada, it growls on the slopes <,af 

 gulches in the juniper belt at about 6,000 feet altitude in the mountains. 

 At Searchlight, Nevada, it grows on the slopes of dry hills in 'tlie^Larrcft 

 belt. It has never been seen anywhere else except a questionable specimen 

 by CoviUe in the Death Valley region. Echinocactus Sileri he follows 

 Rose in crediting it to Utah, and Rose knows nothing about' it except the 

 brief note of Engelraann in the original description, who credits "it to 

 Pipe Spring, Arizona (not Utah), and on Cottonwood creek, near there. 

 There is no evidence that the plant grows in Utah. He credits it to the 

 artemisia belt, when it is in the co\allea belt. Echinocatus Simpscni he 

 also gives tvv^o i's, as usual. His localities for this are plains and hill- 

 sides in the artemisia belts. There is no evidence that it ever grovv's on 

 plains. Its chief localities are rocky ridges of the oak zone?, and lower 

 spruce zones, though at Colton, Utah, it grows just on the lower edge^of 

 the oak zone. He does not give Mammillaria deserti at all. He gives 

 Opuntia pulchella as desert areas and hillsides of the artemisia belt. So 

 far as I have seen it grows on flats in the atriplex areas of western 

 Nevada only. He does not give O. rutila at all, nor mesacaritha, nor 

 arborescenes, and he gives no symphony. He does not give the mouirtain 

 ^Mammillarias at all. His distribution knowledge is about nil except v/1r»t 

 he can get from others. This is a sample of the whole work,- arid' \he 

 Government is paying for this kind of stuff. Why not send the?^ younj^ 

 men out to dig potatoes? They could only hurt the potatoes. 



In his account of Lepidium scopulorum Jones his localities are* '^Val- 

 leys and canyons, and mountainsides, whicb shows that he know.c. nothing 

 about its habitat, for it grows only on cli...s, never in valleys. He slrows 

 the same ignorance in Lepidium integrifolium, where he says "valleys and 

 foothills of the artemisia and Pinon belts,'' when in fact 'the plant grows 

 only on alkaline flats along with Sarcobatus and the" like. 



Another illustration of Tidestrom's foolish way of citing locairties is 

 Tva Nevadensis Jones. He gives it as "Artemisia ,belt" Nevada. "Now 

 since all of Nevada except the southern part is artehisia belt, this' has no 

 significance except to exclude it from Utah. Now the facts are 'that up 

 to die time of the publication of his flora nobody ever saw' it but myself, 

 the original collector and I found it in the park at Hawthorne and th.e 

 type locality seems to have been obliterated. Now Hawthorne is on the 

 very lower edge of the sagebrush adjoining *the' Tropical. Since 'then I 

 have found it in two localities, in identical zonal localities, one at Benton 

 Station in the upper edge of Owen's valley and the other west of Colum- 

 bus INIarsh, near the pass leading over "from Tonopah to Bishop, arid'botli 

 in California. From Tiedstrom's locality ^ no one would know whether 

 the plant grew at Ely, Searchlight, or Reno. Tidestrom * does not" know 

 enough about ecology to know that the artemisia belt goes through two 

 life zones from the Larrea (CoviHea) to 'the -spruce tGanaaiah), -and 



