ME. C. B. CLABKE ON INDIAN SPECIES OF CYPEBIT8. 25 



A very common form is the " puncticulate nut ; " here most of 

 the outermost cells have a minute microscopic puncture (a very- 

 small pore, if you like) at their centre, through which the darker 

 body of the nut is seen (fig. 37), as in C. pumilus, var. punctata. 

 But a great number of the nuts described as punctate are not 

 punctate. In those species in which the outer cells are specially 

 impunctate but slightly inflated, their middle points, being ele- 

 vated above their margins, reflect the light strongly, and, under a 

 pocket lens, the nut looks covered with rows of white points ; 

 these are more particularly the punctate nuts of cyperologists, 

 and they are particularly devoid of punctations ; something be- 

 tween fig. 35 and fig. 36 represents them. 



Lastly, the outer cells are more detergible, so that only their 

 margins remain (fig. 39). The dark body of the nut is covered 

 with a reticulate white veil ; this is the " reticulated nut " pro- 

 perly so called ; but this name is applied loosely to any nut of 

 which the quadrate outer cells are to be seen with a pocket lens. 

 The outer cells often flake off entirely in places, giving the nut 

 a patchy appearance. This is more strictly the velate nut of 

 authors ; but the term velate is applied to any nut where the outer 

 cells have been rubbed off partially, which causes the presence of 

 the outer cells to be recognizable under a pocket lens; and it 

 means, with cyperologists, no more than that the outer layer of 

 cells is distinctly recognizable. But in either sense the term 

 velate is (in my opinion) of no (or the very smallest) value. 



SECTION H. 

 Parag. 1. On the Subgenus Anosporum. 



The abundant Bengal species Cyperus cephalotes, Yahl, was 

 proposed as a genus by Nees in hb. Wight as TJngeria, a name 

 preoccupied ; he therefore published the genus in ' Linnaea ' under 

 the name Anosporum, and placed it in the tribe Hypolytreaa. 

 Boeckeler published the same species (in 1858) as the genus 

 TrentepoUia, which he placed among the Ficineae ; but in his 

 Cyperaceaa Boeckeler admits the prior name Anosporum, and 

 removes the genus next Cyperus. Finally, Bentham (in * Flora 

 Australiensis ') not merely reduces the plant to Cyperus,hut does 

 not think it deserving of a section or even subsection of its own ; 

 he places it among the Juncelli. 



The cause of so great discordance of opinion arises on the 



