60 ME. C. B. CLARKE ON INDIAN SPECIES OF CTPEEUS. 



Nepaul (Wattich n. 3385, h. Calcutta). 

 Bhotan, alt. 1000 me;tr. (Gamble n. 9598, h. Calcutta). 

 Assam (Griffith n. 1022, h. Calcutta). 

 Cliota Nagpore (Wood, h. Calcutta). 



Madras (Wight in Wallich n. 3318 B, h. Calcutta; Wight 

 n. 2878, h. Calcutta). 



Forma tortuosa ; spicularum rhachilla ssepe torta. 



Cabul (Griffith n. 31, h. Kew). 



Persia: Susiana (Haussknecht, h. Mtfs. Brit.). 



He de France (Roxburgh, h. Mus. Brit. ; Balfour, h. Kew). 



Of this most interesting species, the above list of localities and 

 of varieties and forms is poor and unfinished ; because, when I 

 wrote out the varieties in England, I accepted Boeckeler's view 

 that the colour was the most important character, and I therefore 

 put the black Khasi form (which is just as black sometimes as the 

 Nilgherry one) with the var. (sp. Boeck.) nilagirica, as Boeckeler 

 himself has done. 



But a longer consideration of the splendid series of material in 

 the Calcutta Herbarium has convinced me that the Khasi black 

 variety is as distinct from the Nilgherry black variety as is any 

 form collected under the name globosus ; and I should now arrange 

 the varieties in two main series, one, globosus proper, extending 

 from the Mediterranean through Central Asia, North India, to 

 China and Japan ; the other, strictus, with narrower spikelets, in 

 Java, South India, Persia, South Africa. The difference between 

 C. strictus and C. nilagiricus is wholly one of colour. C. globosus, 

 in both its varieties, exhibits every variety of colour, from pale 

 straw through ruddy-brown to black, but not the purple-red 

 tinge so common in Cgperus. It is very hard to say what is the 

 essential character of the species: in most forms, the exactly 

 parallel sides of the spikelet and. very regularly-arranged glumes 

 are characteristic, but in the beautiful form cinnamomea (Mann, 

 n. 372) this fails us. It is difficult to say how C. lanceus and 

 C. atronitens differ, or to show that tbey differ as much from 

 C. globosus as the admitted forms of C. globosus differ between 

 themselves. 



Many of our " species " of Cyperus, as C. atronitens, are founded 

 on specimens all collected within one small area, which are exactly 

 similar inter se, and form a sharply- defined species. By com- 

 paring a set of these with some one local form of C. globosus, we 



