IN SOUTH CAROLINA. 115 
vegetation is essentially Canadian, intermixed with a con- 
siderable number of peculiar species. Under the guidance 
of Mr. Levi Moody, we followed the Watauga, bere a mere 
creek, for four or five miles along the base of the Grand- 
Sather, until we reached a ridge which promised a compara- 
tively easy ascent. In the rich soil of this ridge, at an eleva- 
tion of about 400 feet above the Watauga, we found one of 
those plants which, of all others, we were desirous of obtaining, 
viz. Carew. Fraseriana. Mr. Curtis had made diligent but 
ineffectual search for this most singular and rarest of Carices, 
along the “ Catawba near Morganton,” and “near Table 
Mountain,” where Fraser is said to have discovered it; and 
we believe that no subsequent botanist has ever met with it, 
except Mr. Kin, whose specimen, in Muhlenberg's herba- 
rium, is merely ticketed, * DeigAer walli in der Wilternus.” 
Muhlenberg assigns the habitat, * Tyger Valley, Pennsylva- 
nia;” but Kin probably obtained his plant in Tygart's Valley, 
Virginia, a secluded spot among the western ranges of the 
Alleghanies (in Randolph county), not far from Greenbrier 
Mountains, and other localities visited by this collector, as 
his labels prove. Kin cultivated the plant for some time at 
Philadelphia, where it was seen by several botanists, and 
among them by Pursh, who took it for the Mapania sylvatica 
of Aublet;—a mistake which he did not discover whilst 
Writing his Flora in Europe, although he had the cultivated 
Carex Fraseriana before him, We were too late for good 
Specimens, but succeeded in obtaining a considerable number 
with the fruit still adherent. The plant grows in tufts, after 
the manner of C. plantaginea; its evergreen leaves are a 
foot or more long, and often an inch and a half in width, 
With singularly undulate margins; the slender scapes are 
naked, except towards the root, where they are sheathed by 
in this region, we may mention Carew flezuosa, C. plantaginea, C. scabrata, 
C. intumescens, Ozalis Acetosella, Streptopus roseus, Viburnum lantanoides, 
and Platanthera orbiculata in the finest condition and in greater profusion 
than we ever before met with this, the most striking of North American 
Orchidee, ; | Em 
k* 
