ON SOME SCOTTISH ALPINE FORMS OF CAREX 179 



subsp. under C. vesicaria, L. ; and quite possibly with his 

 wide knowledge of the species, he has good reason for so 

 doing. Speaking from my own knowledge of the British 

 forms, I think it would be a pity if the authors of our floras 

 were to do this. It is well worthy of specific rank. Quite 

 independently of what the floras say, it is no more a plant 

 of three stigmas than C. Goodenowii is ; and I may say that 

 this remark is borne out by the investigation of hundreds of 

 spikelets which I have examined in various districts in 

 Norway. No doubt it is rather a difficult plant to describe 

 definitely. It seems to me what De Vries would call an 

 ever-sporting species ; yet the most essential features vary 

 little, -what variation there is being probably due to cross- 

 ing and intercrossing, so that some of its forms when dried 

 are hard to separate from some of the forms of C. rigida 

 and C. Goodenowii. It has very little in common with 

 C. vesicaria until crossed with it, when the light-tipped 

 glumes, lengthened, stout, tapering neck of the perigynia, 

 and the deeply bifid beak shows this at once. It should be 

 classified as a species having two stigmas, light to blackish- 

 brown, seldom without a white tip, perigynia nerveless unless 

 at the sides, light to blackish-brown, beak emarginate or 

 erose. In the type the perigynium is suddenly contracted 

 into a very short neck, the mouth in the flowering stage is so 

 shallow in the fissure as scarcely to warrant the term bifid ; 

 and it can best be separated from the var. alpigena by the 

 perigynia of that form tapering to a much longer constricted 

 neck, and always having a distinctly bifid beak. 



Forma I. dichroa, Blytt. Through the kindness of Prof. 

 Wille I had a few hours among the Carices in the Uni- 

 versity Herbarium in Christiania this year, and turned up 

 this form. In going carefully over all the sheets I found 

 Blytt's own description, " med naesten straagule Frukter," to 

 fit them exactly. They are neither more nor less than the 

 ordinary form of the type with almost straw-yellow perigynia. 

 The almost is advisable here, for like our own there were 

 some with a considerable part green, and some with a light 

 brown tinge among them. 



This form is quite common on our hills. As a rule it is 

 greenish when collected in July, but dries yellow, while in the 



