24 Rhodora [January 



safest to treat the two plants, as most European students are doing, 

 as two well marked geographic varieties. But, fortunately, the 

 circumpolar variety, the plant now so generally called in Europe 

 S. ccspitosus, var. auMriacus, cannot retain that name, so inappro- 

 priate for a circumpolar plant. Long before Palla had pointed out 

 the differences between the extremes, Jacob Bigelow, finding the cir- 

 cumpolar plant on the White Mountains of New Hampshire and 

 thinking, obviously from collections in different states of develop- 

 ment, that he had two new species, described them as 



"Scirpus obtusus — Culmo tereti, nudo, monostachyo; spica lancco- 

 lata, squamis apicc carnosis, obtusis" 

 and as 



"Scirpus bracteatus — Culmo tereti, monostachyo; spiea ovata, brac- 

 teis involucrata; flosculis monandris." 1 



Bigelow's 8. bracteatus was obviously over-ripe (spica ovata) and 

 his "flosculis monandris" an error due to the loss of some stamens, 

 but Rafinesque characteristically rushed it into a new genus as 

 Aplostemon bracteatum, "my genus Aplostemon, containing all the 

 species of Scirpus with one stamen." 2 



Bigelow soon thereafter received from Europe material of true 

 Scirpus ccspitosus and accordingly reduced his two species to S. 

 ccspitosus, var. ft. callosus, 3 the name which the plant treated as a 

 variety should bear. If the plant is treated as a species it should 

 be called S. bracteatus Bigel., the name S. obtusus having been pre- 

 empted by Willdenow. 



The nomenclature of the circumpolar plant may be summarized 

 as follows: 



Scirpus cespitosus L., var. callosus Bigelow, Fl. Bost. ed. 2, 

 21 (1824). S. obtusus and S. bracteatus Bigel., N. E. Journ. Med. 

 v. 335 (1816). Aplostemon bracteatum (Bigel.) Raf., Am. Mo. Mag. 

 i. 441 (1817). Trichophorum austriacum Palla, Berichte Deutsch. 

 Bot. Gesellsch. xv. 468 (1897). S. cespitosus, B. austriacus (Palla) 

 Aschers. & Graebn. Syn. Mitteleurop. Fl. ii. Ab. 2, 300 (1904). 



Var. callosus, the common American form of S. cespitosus is typi- 

 cal of acid bogs and tundra and, in eastern America at least, the 

 peaty alpine regions of our granitic mountains. It forms stiffly 

 resistent tussocks, with wiry culms and firm stramineous basal 



1 Bigel., N. E. Journ. Mod. v. 335 (1816). 

 »Raf., Am. Mo. Mag. i. 441 (1817). 

 ' Bigel. Fl. Bost. ed. 2, 21 (1824). 



