Southwestern localities visited by Charles Wright 



Elmer Ottis Wooton 



Systematic botanists who have tried to work with the plants 

 collected by Charles Wright in the southwestern portion of the 

 United States, know something of the difficulties arising, (i) from 

 the changes of geographical names which have taken place in that 

 region, and (2) from the fact that very few of the sheets show 

 anything but a single printed label, when one looks for locality 

 data. 



Each specimen has a number which is referred to in connec- 

 tion with all those species listed in Plantae Wrightianae. Locali- 

 ties are unknown for practically all the other specimens collected. 

 Each plant was collected under its own separate number by Mr. 

 Wright and his field notes containing these numbers are still in 

 existence ; but, unfortunately, the plants were not distributed under 

 the collection numbers. Since the labels do not show localities 

 (and sometimes only the year of collection) it is very difficult it 

 not well-nigh impossible to tell where some of the specimens came 

 from in any but the most general way. 



The labels for the 1849 collection say "Collected on a jour- 

 ney from San Antonio, Texas, to El Paso, New Mexico/' etc., 

 giving the year and the collector's name. At that time New 

 Mexico was a somewhat indefinite area extending from well down 

 in what is now the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, to and including 

 some of southern Colorado, and including some of western Texas, 

 all of Arizona, and a little of Nevada. The El Paso there referred 

 to is not the present Texan city, but is the ancestor, as it were, of 

 the present-day Ciudad de Juarez, just across the Rio Grande 

 from El Paso, and then known as El Paso del Norte. 



In making a study of the flora of New Mexico, it has been my 

 fate to meet many of these labels and to wonder (and work for 

 hours without result) as to whence in all that vast expanse a par- 

 ticular plant had come. 



Through Dr. 



Wright 



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