118 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



C. panicea^ var. Behhii^ Olney, Exsicc. fasc. i. no. 22. 

 G. Meadii, var. Bebbii, Arthur, Contr. Fl. Iowa, vi. 



Culm slender, scabrous, at least above : leaves narrow, green : spikes 

 pale, mostly greenish, mostly thin and loosely flowered, attenuated 

 below : bracts, at least the lower ones, three inches or more in length : 

 perigynium smaller, not turgid, greenish, prominently many-nerved : 

 scale muticous or short-awned. — Meadows and borders of ponds from 

 W. Massachusetts and Pennsylvania to Lousiana and Indian Territory 

 and the Great Plains of British America. 



This may be the C castanea, Wahl. Kongl. Acad. Handl. 155 (1803), 

 an American species which its author says (PL Lapp. 250) is the 

 same as C. refracta, Schkuhr, fig. 136. Schkuhr's figure, with a 

 straight beak, is not the same plant as that described under the same 

 name by Willdenow, whose description he copies. Both Schkuhr and 

 Willdenow record C. refrqcta as a native of Mt. Cenis, but Sprengel 

 (Syst. Veg. iii. 825) declares that they were both mistaken. The 

 specimens found in Willdenow's herbarium by Schlechtendal (Linna^a, 

 X. 2GG) were sent from Pennsylvania by Muhlenberg. It is evi- 

 dent that a plant from Mt. Cenis became mixed with the original 

 specimens and was figured by Schkuhr (f. 136). This Mt. Cenis 

 plant is evidently C vagiiiata, Tausch. Wahlenberg's G. castanea can 

 scarcely be referred to G. vaginata, as he describes the leaves as 

 hirsute, a character, however, which exists in some weak forms of 

 C. tetanica. Until a final disposition is made of this G. castanea, the 

 G. castanea of Elliott should hold its later name, G. Elliottii, Schw. 

 & Torr. 



Willdenow's Species Plantarum, in which G. refracta is published, 

 dates a year earlier than Schkuhr's Riedgraser, where G. tetanica is 

 published ; but many if not all of Schkuhr's plates were published 

 before the Species Plantarum, and there is a constant cross reference 

 between the two authors. 



Var. Meadii. 



G. Meadii, Dewey, Sill. Journ. xliii. 90. 



G. panicea, var. Meadii, Olney, Exsicc. fasc. i. no. 21. 



G. panicea, var. Ganbyi, Olney, Exsicc. fasc. ii. nos. 24 and 25. 



G. panicea, Olney, 1. c, in part. 

 Differs from the last in its stiffer culm, thicker and densely flowered 

 spikes, the ujiper one or two sessile or nearly so, and not attenuated at 

 the base : perigynium larger. Bears the name of the late Dr. S. B. 

 Mead, of Augusta, Illinois. — "Wet meadows and borders of ponds ; 

 Providence, Rhode Island, Olney; Delaware Co., Pennsylvania, 



