74 Rhodora [Aphil 



as identk'al with C. mageUanica. This identity, as interpreted hy 

 Francis Boott, was not absolute for, while in 1847 he had regarded 

 the plants as specifically distinct,* he subsequently treated them as 

 varieties of one species. In doing so, however, he reversed in a man- 

 ner which would nowadays be considered quite irregular the nomen- 

 clatorial status of the plants, offering the following explanation: — 

 "I have adopted the name of Tvamarck [magellanica], as I cannot see 

 any specific distinction between the Fuegian and the European and 

 [North] American plant; but I have described the last as the typical 

 form, as most generally known, giving a figure of the first as a var. ft." ^ 



Subsequent authors have varied in their interpretation of the two 

 plants, but those who have followed Francis Boott in regarding them 

 as specifically inseparable have generally failed to indicate that there 

 is even a varietal difference between the two. Others, however, have 

 regarded the boreal Carex irrigua as specifically distinct from C. 

 magellanwa; and an examination of specimens collected by Dr. R. O. 

 Cunningham in January, 18()9, at Port Famine, and of the descriptions 

 and plates of Schkuhr, Boott, and others, indicates that this is the 

 wiser course. 



In the first place, Carex magellanica has androgynous spikes. All 

 descriptions from Lamarck's original^ in 1789 to Macloskie's * in 1904 

 agree upon this, and in the plates of Schkuhr ® and the Flora Antarctica " 

 the plant is thus represented, though in Boott's Illustrations ' one of 

 the five specimens drawn is shown with the terminal spike wholly 

 .staminate; and Boott states upon the authority of Spach that, of the 

 26 specimens in the Herbarium of the IVIuseum d'llistoire Naturelle 

 at Paris 2 have the terminal spike staminate and 24 have it staminate 

 only at base. Of the boreal C. irrigua w^iich has recently passed as 

 C. magellanica I have examined 633 inflorescences of which GOO have 

 the terminal spike strictly staminate and only 33 have it more or less 

 androgynous. These figures, then, show very clearly opposite ten- 

 dencies of the two plants. 



Furthermore, the much larger scales of Carex magellan ica are nearly 

 or quite as broad as the perigynia. In C. irrigua, on the other hand, 

 the shorter narrower scales so fail to cover the perigynia that even in 



I Boott in Hook. Fl. Antarct. 365 (1847). 



'Boott, 111. ii. 80 (1860). "Schkuhr, Riedgr. 52, t. N., fiR. 51 (1801). 



3 Lam. Eiicyc. iii. 385 (1789). «Hook. Fl. Antarct. t. 143. (1847). 



♦Macloskie, Fl. Pat. 284 (1904). 'Boott. 111. ii. t.'220 (1860). 



