Page 108 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

Some of his notes from the July 1904 trip to the Black Range are insightful - in all sorts of ways. The following is from “Elmer Ottis Wooton and the Botanizing of New Mexico” by Kelly W. Allred, in Systematic Botany, Vol. 15, No. 4 [Oct.-Dec. 1990], p. 702.
Wooton’s interest was not limited to one, or even several, segments of botany. For instance, he and Standley published “The Ferns of New Mexico” in the July-September, 1915 (Vol. 5, No. 3) issue of the American Fern Journal. Several species from the Black Range are discussed in the work. In 1903, Wooton had published “The Ferns of the Organ Mountains” in Torreya, Vol. 3, No. 11 (November 1903), pp. 161-164.
In “The Larkspurs of New
Mexico” (Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club , Jan. 1910, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 31-41) Wooton shed some light on the status of botany in the Territory when he noted that:
“Recently I had occasion to name
a specimen from the Black
Range, and in comparing it with
our herbarium material my ‘eyes
were opened’ and I saw that
there were various and different
specimens labeled D.
scopulorum, more forms than
could properly belong in what Dr.
Gray called "a collective species."
Whether these various different
kinds of plants are to be called
different species, varieties, or races
is a question which has not yet been decided, but it seems to me proper to call attention to the differences which I think can be seen by any one who is sufficiently interested
“but it seems to me proper to call attention to the differences which I think can be seen by any one who is sufficiently interested to look, and I shall follow my own solution”
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to look, and I shall follow my own solution of the above question and call them species. Others may do as they like in designating the degrees of differentiation.” (p. 31)