Rhodora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 20. March, 1918. 
HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN RECORD OF SCIRPUS 
MUCRONATUS. 
BAYARD LONG. 
In an article by Dr. N. L. Britton, entitled New or Noteworthy North 
American Phanerogams, published in 1888, there appears the note: 
“ Scirpus mucronatus, L. This Old World species was collected 
over twenty years ago in Delaware County, Penn., by Mr. C. E. Smith 
and Dr. George Smith, and appears to have since lain unnoticed in our 
herbarium, which is to a certain degree my own fault, for there is a 
specimen in the Torrey Herbarium dating back to 1864....” 
This record was carried forward in 1890 in Watson and Coulter’s 
edition of Gray’s Manual where the species is credited to “a single 
locality in Delaware Co., Penn.”; also in 1896 in Britton and Brown’s 
Illustrated Flora — “ In a swamp in Delaware County, Pennsylvania” — 
and in 1901 in Britton’s Manual. In 1903 in Porter’s Flora of Pennsyl- 
vania the species was recorded from an additional county — Chester. 
In Keller and Brown’s Flora of Philadelphia and Vicinity in 1905 the 
original station in Delaware County was more definitely noted as 
Rhoads’ Swamp, on the authority of Benjamin H. Smith, and the 
new record from Chester County was copied from Porter. In the 
second edition of Britton’s Manual of 1905 and in the third edition of 
two years later the record stood as in the Manual of 1901. In Lin- 
naeus Fussell’s List of Delaware County Plants, published in the Pro- 
ceedings of the Delaware County Institute of Science in 1906, the 
plant received a recognized place in the flora, without comment. In 
1 Britton, Bull, Torr. Bot. Cl. xv. 103 (1888). 
