FERNALD. — CARICES OP SECTION HYPARRHENAE, 451 



restoring to specific rank C. festucacea, has included in it Dewey's C. 

 straminea, var. hrevior, and in tlie Illustrated Flora he figures the 

 latter plant under the former name. But the late Dr. Eliot C. Howe, 

 in his admirable ti-eatment of the New York Species of Carex, has 

 recognized both plants, thus following the general treatment of Francis 

 Boott and other earlier writers and at the same time clearing the names 

 festucacea and hrevior from the confusion which has recently surrounded 

 them. 



Carex foenea, var. /? of Boott has had a peculiarly unsettled history. 

 When Francis Boott described and figured the plant as a variety of O. 

 foenea, the latter name applied to O. albolutescens, Schweinitz, not to 

 the true C. foenea of Willdenow. It was Boott's opinion, then, that 

 the slender brown-spiked plant of the interior was a phase of what we 

 now know without much doubt to be G. albolutescens. In the fifth 

 edition of the Manual Dr. Gray took up C. foenea, var. /3 as C. foenea, 

 var. ( ?) ferruginea ; and later the plant was distributed by Olney as a 

 variety of Dewey's G. tenera ((7. straminea, var. aperta, Boott). In his 

 Preliminary Synopsis in 1886, Professor Bailey reduced it to synonymy 

 under G. straminea, Schkuhr (not Willd.), and later in his Critical 

 Studies of Types he treated this plant along with G. festucacea, Schkuhr, 

 and C. straminea, var, Grawei, Boott ( G. BicknelUi, Britton) as iden- 

 tical with C. straminea, var. hrevior, Dewey ( C. straminea, Schkuhr, 

 not Willd.). Subsequently, however, he has taken out of his C. stra- 

 minea, var. hrevior, two plants, which he treats as parallel varieties, 

 var. Grawei, Boott, and yhv. ferruginea {C. foenea, var. y8, Boott); and at 

 the same time he has discussed as a species G. albolutescens, Schweinitz 

 (C foenea of authors, not Willd.). This course has greatly cleared 

 the group from its former confusion ; but it is unfortunate that while 

 separating C. albolutescens specifically Professor Bailey should have 

 attached C. foenea, var. j3 to the slender usually flexuous-spiked G. 

 straminea, whose identity he had already so carefully worked out. G. 

 foenea, var. /3 in its stiff habit, its strongly appressed broad-ovate peri- 

 gynia, and the lexture of its leaf-sheaths, is quite unlike that species, 

 but is very close to G. albolutescens with which it had been placed by 

 Francis Boott. In these characters, likewise, it is equally close to G. 

 alata, Torr., while its perigynia and the occasional awn-tips of the scales 

 are so like those of the latter species as to place it nearer to that than 

 to the former plant. 



The two species, Garex foenea, Willd., and G. adusta, Boott, have 

 already been discussed and very clearly settled by Professor Bai- 



