TRbooora 
JOURNAL OF 
THE NEW ENGLAND BOTANICAL CLUB 
Vol. 26. November, 1924. No. 311. 
JUNCUS TRIGLUMIS AND ITS AMERICAN 
REPRESENTATIVE. 
M. L. FERNALD. 
ONE of the most attractive of arctic-alpine Junc? is the little plant 
described by Linnaeus as Juncus triglumis. In Eurasia it is charact- 
eristic of wet peaty or boggy spots in the arctic and alpine areas, 
and in America the name J. triglumis is familiar to students of the 
arctic flora and that of the Rocky Mountains south to New Mexico. 
My first experiences with the American plant were with Professor 
Wiegand on the limestone barrens of southeastern Labrador and 
western Newfoundland in 1910, when the plant, which is quite like 
the specimens from the Rocky Mountains, was labeled, like them, 
J. triglumis. During the summer of 1924, with Messrs. Bayard Long 
and Boyd Dunbar, I again collected the Newfoundland plant on the 
limestone barrens bordering the Straits of Belle Isle. There the plant 
showed such variation in stature and coloring that it has received 
more than passing study; and the result of this study is a demon- 
stration that the North American plant is a species distinct from that 
of Eurasia. 
The Eurasian plant, J. triglumis L., has, as accurately described 
by Buchenau, the bracts of the inflorescence usually obtuse or the lower 
mucronate, and ordinarily conspicuously shorter than the flowers. In 
all the American material (including that from Greenland) seen the 
lower bract is long-acuminate or long-awned and equal to or overtopping 
the lowest flower. In J. triglumis the mature capsule is 6-7 mm. long, 
conspicuously exserted from the perianth, firm, castaneous and conic to 
rounded below the short beak. In the American plant the thinner and 
usually paler capsule is included or barely exserted, 3-4 mm. long, and 
rounded to subtruncate at summit. In J. triglumis the mature seeds 
