ME. G. BENTnAAI ON CYPEBACE.E. 3G7 



spikelet witliout any or only very minute glumes, the androgynous 

 clusters collected in heads, the heads in corymbose panicles ; 

 Becquerelia, Brongn., the female spikelet with 4 or 5 glumes 

 half enclosing the nut, the androgynous clusters densely cymose, 

 the cymes in corymbose panicles ; Iloppia, Nees, the female 

 spikelet enclosed in a utricle formed apparently of three united 

 glumes, the androgynous clusters very numerous in one or more 

 close compound heads. 



2. ScLEBiEiE. — Spikelets either androgynous, with one female 

 flower at the base of several or many males, or unisexual, the 

 females in the lower part of the inflorescence. Three genera: 

 Eriospora, Hocbst., a very natural and distinct tropical-African 

 genus of three or four species, of which two are referred by 

 Boeck^ler to Tnlepis, and a third to Carpha ; Scleria, a large 

 genus common to the New and the Old World, divided by Nees 

 and others into about fourteen genera, now usually reunited ; and 

 Kobresia, Willd. (Ehjna, Schrad.), including Trilepis, Nees, as to 

 the Indian species from which his character was chiefly drawn. 



3. Caeiceje. — Female spikelets, consisting each of a single 

 utricular glume enclosing the flower, arranged in a spike along 

 the axis of a simple inflorescence, or of its branches, the male 

 spikelets usually many-flowered, terminal and distinct, or con- 



. tinuous with the female spike above or very rarely below it, 

 the bracts subtending the utricles or female spikelets similar to 

 or passing into the glumes subtending the male flowers. Four 

 genera : — (1) Hemicarex, a genus I should propose for some East- 

 Indian and South- African plants which have all the characters 

 of Carex except that the utricle is open on the inner side to 

 below the middle and sometimes quite to the base, the rhachilla 

 present, but not exceeding the glume ; it includes all the 

 Schcenoxiphia of Boeckeler (except 8. rufum), Kobresia laxa, Nees, 

 K. reticularis and K. Hookeri, Boeckel., and Carex linearis, Boott ; 

 (2) Schosnoxiphium, Nees, limited to the typical South -African 

 S. rufum, Nees (S. Dregeanum, Kunth), with the rhachilla pro- 

 truding from the utricle and proliferous, bearing several glumes 

 either empty or enclosing male flowers; (3) Uncinia, Pers., a 

 genus generally spread over the colder regions of the southern 

 hemisphere, and extending along the Andes to Mexico and the 

 ^West Indies; (4) the cosmopolitan genus Carex, by far the 

 largest amongst Cyperaceae or even amongst Glumacea3 generally. 



f- LINN. JOUBN. BOTANY, VOL. XVIII. 2 E 



