24 
I suspect that a better knowledge of this plant will show that 
it is sufficiently individualized to stand as a species. 
CAREX SETACKA Dewey. 
Culm 11%4°-4° tall, mostly exceeding the long leaves, trigo- 
nus, often with concave sides, sharply serrulate-scabrous on the 
angles above, smooth below. Leaves 1°—2° long, 1/-3/ wide. 
Head about 2’ long (1%4'-2%4’), 3-5’ wide, silvery-green to 
chestnut brown, mostly narrow with much broken outlines, often 
with short ascending branches at the base. Spikelets mostly 
ovoid-oblong, those terminating the branches sometimes attenuate 
and loosely flowered at the base, simple and crowded above, be- 
coming somewhat alternate and glomerate-clustered or compound 
below, the lowest cluster sometimes separated. Head throughout 
either setaceously short-bracteate, the lowest bract not more prom- 
inent than those above, or all the bracts short and inconspicuous. 
Spikelets rather densely flowered, chaffy, the scales conspicuous, 
nearly concealing the appressed to subspreading perigynia. Peri- 
gynia lanceolate, graduated from a truncate base into a narrow 
beak, and smooth and nerveless or nearly so ( se/acea ),or elliptic- 
lanceolate to ovate, with less abrupt base and short beak and — 
mostly somewhat wrinkled-nerved ( C. scabrior Sartwell), 13477 
1%” long, 4-34” wide, the edges of the beak strongly serrulate 
or subaculeolate hispid. Achene larger than in vulpinoidea. 
As compared with valpinoidea the perigynium is without 
corky-thickened margins, and is more evenly graduated into a much 
rougher beak; the scales are larger, giving a chaffy appearance to 
the spikes, and are silvery-hyaline (scadrior) or becoming chestnut 
(setacea), in contrast with the smailer greenish-white or yellowish- 
brown scales of vulpinoidea, and are mostly more acuminate into 
a more delicate awn; the lower bract of the head is never much 
elongated or foliaceous, and altogether the head has a distinctly 
different appearance. I feel assured that a close acquaintance 
with this plant in life and a full series of specimens would only 
serve to emphasize its distinctness from C. vulpinoidea. 
The description of Carex setacea here given is drawn to include 
the Carex scabrior of Sartwell. A type specimen of the latter 
(Carices Americae Septentrionalis. H.P. sartwell, M.D., No.72) | 
is in the Herbarium of Columbia College, and the plant is well 
figured among Boott’s illustrations of C. vulpinoidea (Ill. pl. 409). 
With this guidance I have been able without any hesitation to — 
refer to scaérior rather than to sefacea, a specimen collected at New | 
