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1967. Since 1981, he has been a Team Leader taxa. He continues to teach a wide range of bot for the Fish and Wildlife Service's Arizona Re any classes at Arizona State University, where covery Team for Endangered and Threatened he has served as advisor to many graduate stu Plants. He serves on the editorial board of the dents, a number of whom have received state Manual of Vascular Plants of Arizona and is co- and national awards while under his instruction. editor for the Journal of Arizona-Nevada Acad On collecting trips through the Southwest and emy of Sciences. Mexico, Don has collected more than 14,000 Don has published many scientific and pop specimens for the Arizona State University Her ular articles, ranging from chromosome counts barium. and hybridization studies to descriptions of new
DR. THOMAS COULTER Dr. Thomas Coulter (1793-1843), an Irishman and naturalist, was employed as a doctor with a mining company in Sonora, Mexico, from 1829-1831. In 1831 he went to Monterey, California, where he met and collaborated with David Douglas (1798-1834), one of the most important and prominent botanical collectors. Coulter traveled southward to San Diego and then across the deserts to Arizona. His collections were in excess of 50,000 specimens. In Botany of California, Vol. II, published in 1880, William Henry Brewer (1828-1910) wrote: "Dr. Thomas Coulter, who collected in Mexico for many years, reached Monterey, in November 1831, and remained in Upper California until late in 1832 or possibly even longer, during which time he visited 'all the habitable parts' of the country. The most notable of his excursions was one to the Colorado River in 1832. He left Monterey late in March, was at San Gabriel April 23, and at the ford of the Colorado River, just below the mouth of the Gila, May 8. He returned by the same route and was again at Monterey July 19. He was the first botanist to reach the interesting Colorado desert and Gila regions, and some of his species were not again found until very many years after. He collected more than a thousand species in Mexico and California; but they remained mostly undistributed and unknown until after the collector's death and the appointment of the late Prof. W. H. Harvey as curator of the herbarium of Trinity College, Dublin, which at that time, or previously, came into possession of them." Larry W. Mitich
CAPTAIN JOHN C. FREMONT From 1842-1849, John Charles Fremont (1813-1890), one of the most colorful of western ex plorers and adventurers, was the leader of several U.S. exploring and surveying expeditions. In 1853, Dr. John Torrey (1796-1873) described the plants Fremont collected in Plant ae Fremontianae. Wrote William Henry Brewer (1828-1910) in Botany of California (published in 1880): "Capt. Fremont traversed the continent in 1843 by way of the Great Salt Lake and Humboldt River, crossed the Sierra Nevada in midwinter, just south of Lake Tahoe, and entered California in February 1844, descending the South Fork of the American River. Late in March he set out on his return, passed southward along the eastern edge of the great valley, recrossed the Sierra Nevada at Tehachipi Valley and Fremont's Pass, then to the Mohave and Virgin rivers, and eastward, taking with him the earliest collections that had been made in any portion of the Sierra Nevada Range. In the report of his expedition (usually known as his second expedition), Dr John Torrey described much more extensive collections, but unfortunately many of the specimens were lost by an accident in the mountains. The specimens saved amounted to about 600, and contained many new species, some of which were described by Dr. Torrey in Plantae Fremontianae in the Smithsonian Contributions for 1850." Larry W. Mitich