130 Rhodora [Jury 
Scapoli! revived for the three European species the prelinnean gen- 
eric name Linagrostis. 
In the second edition of the Species Plantarum, however, Linnaeus 
added to his Eriophorum, E. cyperinum,? the type of a large American 
group of species, the Wool Grasses, whose affinities are with Scirpus, 
a fact which Linnaeus himself suspected as shown by his note: 
* statura omnino Cyperi, sed Spicule Scirpi, nisi Semina maturescentia 
producerent Lanam gilvam S. testaceam, vix spiculis longiorem” By 
those systematists who have followed Linnaeus in including with 
the true Eriophorums having long straight flattened bristles, the very 
dissimilar Æ. cyperinum with crinkled and strongly curled terete 
bristles, such generic distinctions as otherwise separate the genera 
Eriophorum and Scirpus are obscured and the former separated from 
the latter merely by the perianth bristles without barbs and more 
or less exceeding the scales of the spikelets. 
That this treatment would place the two genera upon an absurdly 
weak footing is well shown by three nearly related species. Scirpus 
Peckii, Britton, is habitally closely similar on the one hand to the 
Wool Grass, Eriophorum lineatum, Benth. & Hook., and on the other 
hand so close to the unquestioned Scirpus, S. polyphyllus, Vahl., that 
in his original description a specimen of the latter was confused by 
Dr. Britton with the Peck specimen. Yet, Lriophorum lineatum 
has curly elongate barbless bristles which place it near Æ. cyperinum. 
L.; Scirpus polyphyllus has the bristles barbed much as in S. 
atrovirens, but usually bent or slightly curled; and Scirpus Peckit, 
with bristles elongated and curled much as in EzzopAorum lineatum, 
often has a few weak barbs at the tip. These plants, obviously 
inseparable as genera, all have innumerable small spikelets, small 
appressed scales, and 6 perianth-bristles, and by many authors they 
are maintained as members of the genus Scirpus,* a course which 
seems rational and open to no question. 
! Scop. Fl. Carn. ed. 2, i. 47 (1772). 2 L, Sp. ed. 2, 77 (1762). 
3See Brainerd, RHODORA, iii. 32 (1901). 
4 Eriophorum japonicum, Maxim. Bull. Acad. Sci. St.-Pétersb. xxxi. 111 (1886 
and Mél. Biol. xii. 558 (1886), in its 6 bristles somewhat scabrous at tip is 
clearly a Scripus and a full sheet of specimens in the Gray Herbarium, collected 
by Charles Wright on mountain tops near the Ochotsk Sea, shows it to be related 
on the one hand to the Scripus sylvaticus group, and on the other to S$. cyperinus 
and its allies. This plant of the mountains of eastern Asia should be called 
Scirpus japonicus, n. comb. 
