Leslie Newton Goodding had a busy career. It was when he worked for the U. S. Department of Agriculture that he collected the type specimen for the willow jabbered about in this episode. It was the American botanist Carleton Roy Ball, a Salix specialist (geek), who honored Goodding with the species name.
One of the things that caught my attention when reading about Leslie Goodding was that at some point he taught High School in Bisbee, as well as Benson. I bet those teaching gigs supported his plant explorations around southern Arizona.
There are a bunch of Salix spp. in Arizona. My Arizona Flora (1960) lists 16 species and I get a kick out of a more current reference that says “nearly 20 species.” So who knows? I do know that Goodding willow is the most common willow in the southwest and found along streams, meadows, ponds, and wet places below 7,500 ft.
The photos are mine of Salix gooddingii by a pond and in glorious fall foliage.
The scientific name for our gopher snake (or gophersnake. I’ve seen it written both ways) is Pituophis catenifer. The genus looks like a combination...
The scientific name of the ringtail is Bassariscus astutus. It’s in the Procyonidae, the same family as our local borderlands’ critters the raccoons and...