19161 Fernald, — Trisetum spicatum in eastern America 197 



1-2 cm. thick (including the wide-spreading awns). In fact, the 

 inflorescence is so very dense as to suggest, at first glance, that of 

 Phleum alpinum or an Alopecurus; and it is noteworthy that an 

 exceptionally discriminating New England botanist, long familiar in 

 the field with the American var. molle, has placed in the Gray Her- 

 barium a fine sheet of typical T. spicatum collected by himself on a 

 mountain-summit of Salzburg, numbered and carefully labeled, but 

 with no indication of even the generic name of the grass, which to his 

 New England eyes seemed quite strange! In this typical T. spicatum 

 the elliptic-lanceolate brown-edged smooth or merely scabrous-nerved 

 glumes are acute or sometimes very slightly aristate, the upper 4-5 

 mm. long; the attenuate soft lemmas are 3-4 mm. long, slightly 2- 

 cleft but scarcely aristate, and the palea is usually blunt and fimbriate 

 at summit. 



In Greenland and other regions of Arctic American and to some 

 extent in northernmost Eurasia, the low plant with very dense inflo- 

 rescence gives way to var. Maidenii, which is taller (1.5-3.5 dm. high) 

 and with a looser interrupted inflorescence 2-6.5 cm. long, which has 

 spikelets as in typical T. spicatum but with the glumes, lemmas and 

 often the paleas more definitely aristate-tipped. This Arctic Ameri- 

 can representative of the species is apparently less common south of 

 Greenland than var. pilosiglumc, but it occurs on the Torngat Mts. of 

 northeastern Labrador, and very locally south to the mountains of 

 Newfoundland, and the Mingan Islands and the mountains of Gaspe 

 County, Quebec. 



In more temperate areas, of the Canadian and Transition regions, 

 we get var. molle (Michx.) Piper, 1 which is based upon Avena mollis 

 Michx, 2 a plant originally collected at Montreal. This plant in its 

 typical development seems specifically distinct from T. spicatum of 

 Europe, but through var. Maidenii and again through var. pilosiglumc 

 the series seems to merge and, until the complex which is passing in 

 many regions as T. spicatum is more thoroughly studied, it is well to 

 consider it an extreme variation. Var. molle is a tall slender plant, 

 the culms 2-8 dm. high, bearing silvery-green, finally whitish-brown, 

 much interrupted panicles 2.5-11 cm. long. Its spikelets are com- 

 monly larger than in our other varieties, the 2nd. glume 4.5-6.5 mm. 

 long, and the glumes, the deeply 2-cleft lemmas and commonly the 



i Piper, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. xi. 125 (1906). 

 2 Michx. Fl. Bor-Am. i. 72 (1803). 



