TRbooora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 24. December, 1922. No. 288. 
THE NORTHERN VARIETY OF ASPERELLA 
HYSTRIX. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
THE unique Bottle-brush Grass, Asperella Hystrix (L.) Humb. 
(Hystrix patula Moench)! has two pronounced variations which were 
detected by that prince of early New England systematists, Jacob 
Bigelow, but which apparently have not been differentiated by others 
during the succeeding century. In 1824 Bigelow, after describing 
Elymus Hystrix L., said: 
* We have two varieties. 
Three or four feet high, sheaths smocth, spikelets about twenty, 
pubescent. 
One or two feet high, sheaths rough, spikelets about ten, gla- 
brous.’”? 
Examination of all available material shows that while the stature, 
degree of pubescence of the sheaths and number of the spikelets are 
inconstant, the plant with pubescent spikelets is a well defined northern 
variety which should be set off from the typical southern plant with 
glabrous spikelets. All material in the Gray Herbarium from the 
southern half of the range of the species—Oklahoma, Missouri, 
Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, District 
of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania—has strictly 
glabrous lemmas; much material from the northern half of the range— 
Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, New England, New York, northern 
Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin—has densely pilose lemmas. In New 
1 For discussion of the nomenclature of this plant see Hubbard, Ruopora, xiv. 187 
(1912). 
*Bigel. Fl. Bost. ed. 2, 47 (1824). 
