The botanical explorations of Thomas Coulter in Mexico 
and California. 
FREDERICK V. COVILLE. 
WITH PLATE XXXV. 
Among the botanical explorers in North America during 
the first half of the present century was Dr. Thomas Coulter, 
an Irish botanist, whose collections were the basis of import- 
ant contributions to the descriptive botany of Mexico and 
California, but the details of whose life and route of travel are 
known only from the most fragmentary records. As illustrat- 
ing the haze of uncertainty that surrounds the collections of 
Coulter I may cite the case of Gerginia virgata. This 
acanthaceous genus with its single species was founded on 
Coulter’s no. 603!, accredited in the original description as 
“Californie incola.” Later Dr. Asa Gray said of the plant, 
“not since met with; more probably collected in Arizona or 
within the borders of Mexico;”? and still later ‘‘probably Ari- 
zona: not since found.” In our inability, therefore, to as- 
certain an original station, the location of one of our mono- 
typic genera was unknown for fifty years after it was first col- 
lected and finally when found in Sonora in 1884 by Mr. C. G. 
Pringle it was re-described by Dr. Gray as a new genus and 
species, Pringleophytum lanceolatum.* Had Berginia not be- 
come an essentially lost genus, from a lack of knowledge of 
the type locality, all this difficulty would doubtless have been 
avoided. 
Thomas Coulter was born in the year 1793 near Dundalk, 
County Louth, Ireland,* and showed an early liking for out- 
tHarv.; Benth. & Hook. Gen. Pl. 2: 1096. 1876. 
*Gray, Bot. Cal. 1: 588. 1876. 
®Gray, Syn. Fl. 2’: 327. 1878. 
“Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. 20: 292, 293. 1895. : : 
®See Proc, rish Acad. 2: 553-57. 1844. A five-page biographical 
sketch of Coulter is here given by his most intimate friend, the astronomer and 
Physicist, Dr. John Thomas Romney Robinso 
o have 
neith Wittstein (Etymologisch-botanisches Handwérterbuch 233. 1856, 
[ed. 2]), nor Prit esaurus Literature Botanice 70. 1872), nor Hemsley 
(Biologia Centrali-Americana, Botany 7), nor Britten and Boulg: 
place or the date of Coul- 
(Journal of Botany 26: 244. 1888) give either the 
ter’s birth. 
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