46 Rhodora [Marcu 
can plant (C. utriculata, var. minor, Boott) is in any way different 
from the European. In New England and adjacent Canada where 
the plant has been watched for some years the spikes vary extremely 
in size and compactness, and in these characters as well as in that 
of the scale the American plants are perfectly matched by the equally 
diverse European specimens. Professor Bailey’s statement that the 
American plant is not stoloniferous cannot be founded upon study of 
carefully prepared material. It is true that most of the older herba- 
rium specimens, hastily pulled up or broken off, show no stolons, 
but very many of recent collection, both in the Gray Herbarium and 
that of the New England Botanical Club, exhibit long stout stolons 
often a foot in length. This preservation of the stolons in the Ameri- 
can specimens is doubtless due to the greater care exercised by 
recent botanists in the collection of their material. The original 
Carex utriculata of Boott is the coarsest form of the American plant, 
with perigynia often nearly 1 cm. long. As an extreme it is well 
marked but with many transitional specimens constantly occurring it 
cannot be maintained as a species and must be treated, as was done 
by Carey and formerly by Bailey, as a variety of the European 
species. 
The plant described by Francis Boott as Carex O/neyi has been 
treated by Professor Bailey as a hybrid between C. dud//ata and C. 
utriculata. This view of the plant is based largely upon the fact 
that the Providence specimens are “ sterile or nearly so." "The same 
plant was collected abundantly by Wm. Boott in a swamp in eastern 
Massachusetts, and Mr. Canby gets it at different stations in Dela- 
ware. At these stations the plant though often sterile is no more so 
than is often the case in C. utriculata and various other species. 
These Carices being anemophilous must frequently be quite sterile, 
for, depending as they do upon gusts of wind to bring them pollen, 
large areas of the plant may readily remain unfertilized if the wind 
happens to take the pollen away from the colony, and especially if 
the plant is not a common one. Such sterile specimens of not only 
C. Olneyi, but C. Grahami, C. rostrata and its var. utriculata, C. bullata, 
C. monile, and many other species are familiar to most botanists who 
know these plants in the field. The sterility of many specimens of 
C. Olneyi does not seem to the writer sufficient ground for treating it 
as a hybrid. Furthermore, the perigynia of this plant are smaller 
than are those of C. bullata, and if it be considered a hybrid we must 
