Page 68 - Early Naturalists of the Black Range

John Milton Bigelow
1851: Bigelow was associated with two of the major exploratory efforts in the American West. He served on the U.S. - Mexican Boundary Survey as botanist and surgeon and later served as the botanist on the Whipple Exploring Expedition of 1853 (Pacific Railroad Route Survey) along the “I-40” corridor. At the end of his life he lived in Michigan, where he was one of the founders of the Detroit Academy of Medicine and served as the Director of the Meteorological Division of the U. S. Lake Survey.
He collected the holotype of Psoralidium bigelovii, shown below right, at the Santa Rita del Cobre (copper mines) while serving with the Survey. The current name of the species is Psoralea bigelovii or Psoralea tenuiflora var. bigelovii. Along the Mimbres, he collected the syntype of Actinella bigelovii (now Hymenoxys bigelovii, Bigelow’s Rubberweed, shown on the following page.) One mark of a naturalist’s renown is the number of species which are named in his/her honor. In the case of Bigelow, there are a lot, including Gilia bigelovii, Abronia bigelovii, Astragalus bigelovii, Aster bigelovii, Clematis bigelovii, Gentiana bigelovii, Poa bigelovii (and many more - and these are just some of the type specimens collected in New Mexico), but not the genus Bigelowia - which was named in the early 1800’s in honor of Jacob Bigelow. The fact that a Bigelowia genus already existed meant that J. M. Bigelow could not have any of the genera he discovered named after him.
At Cooke’s Spring, Bigelow collected the isosyntype specimen of what is now called Linanthus bigelovii, originally described as Gilia bigelovii by Asa Gray, upper right. (A single specimen which is used in the original description of a species is called a holotype. If no holotype is designated, a syntype is a specimen listed in the original description [assumes more than one specimen], and an isosyntype is a duplicate of a syntype.)
While on the Whipple Expedition, Bigelow collected the type specimen for what is now called Dieteria bigelovii, Bigelow’s Tansyaster, in the Sandia Mountains to our north. This was originally described as Aster bigelovii by Asa Gray. (See specimen sheet, lower right, on following page.) The photos on the following page are from the Grandview Trail just northwest of Sawyers Peak in the Black Range.
And lastly, for our purposes, Bigelow collected the type specimen (specimen sheet at page 69) for Pedicularis centranthera, the Dwarf or Great Basin Lousewort, at Ben More (or Ben Moore) near the copper mines. The location name is no longer used.
As noted in the introduction to the Boundary Survey entries, the wealth of botanists on the expedition had great benefits, but it was also the cause of certain friction.
All of the above speaks to success, but it was not always easy.
“Bigelow had not understood at first that every plant new to him was not a new plant. He had not been aware of Wright’s previous collections nor of Parry’s successes around San Diego. He was disappointed to learn that some of his collections contained plants already named. . . . When Gray
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