1906] Fernald, — New or little known Cyperaceae 183 



slender-spiked plant as true C. virescens illustrating that plant in full, 

 and showing as an extreme form the inflorescence of the thicker- 

 spiked plant. Subsequent authors, on the other hand, have followed 

 the lead of Dewey in treating as true C. virescens the short-spiked 

 plant, while the plant with elongate linear-cylindric spikes has been 

 regarded as a variety (var. costata Dewey) or as a species (C cosieUata 

 Britton). It needs only a brief examination of the original description 

 and figures, however, to show that in so doing, recent authors have 

 treated the wrong plant as C. virescens; and that the plant of JNIuhlen- 

 berg, beautifully illustrated by Schkuhr, was the long-spiked extreme 

 which is now passing as C. virescens, var. costata Dewey, or C. costellata 

 Britton. The other, the short-spiked plant, which is one of the com- 

 monest and most attractive sedges of New England, is apparently 

 without a name, and in recognition of the long and painstaking study 

 of the group by the scholarly New England botanist, Charles Walter 

 Swan, it may appropriately be called 



C. VIRESCENS, var. Swanii, n. var. Usually lower than the species, 

 1.5 to 8 dm. high: the 2 to 5 oblong-cylindric to subglobose spikes 

 3-5 mm. thick; the terminal one (including the staminate base) 9 to 

 18 mm. long, i to J as thick. — C. virescens of recent authors. — Dry 

 banks and copses, southern Maine to Ontario and southward. M. 

 A. Day's no. 202 from Manchester, Vermont, may stand as the type 

 of this variety. ■ ■ 



Carex laxiculmis Schwein., var. copulata (Bailey), n. comb. 

 C. retrocurva, var. copulata Bailey, Herb, distr. no. 161 (1886). C„ 

 digitalis, var. copulata Bailey, Mem. Torr. Bot. Club, i. 47 (1889). 



This variety as first designated by Professor Bailey on the label of 

 his no. 161, from Lansing, Michigan, in 1886 was supposed to include 

 "all our western plants" of the digital is-la.viculmis (retrocurva) group. 

 The particular plant (no. 161) in question was greener than most of 

 the C. laxiculmis (retrocurva) of the coastal states and this point was 

 stropgly emphasized by Professor Bailey, who later, on account of the 

 green not glaucous foliage of the plant transferred it to varietal rank 

 under C. digitalis. Subsequent collections show that the plant may 

 sometimes be glaucous, — as for example, material in the Gray Her- 

 barium from Alma, Michigan, Erie County, Ohio, Port Stanley, Port 

 Dover and Leamington, Ontario; — and specimens of what is in all 

 other points typical C. laxiculmis of the Atlantic States, — from 

 Waverly and Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts — show that the eastern 



