FERNALD. CARICES OP SECTION HYPARRHENAE. 453 



From the former species it differs constantly in its more slender habit 

 and flexuous elongated spikes of clavate-based spikelets, as well as iu 

 smaller achenes. It is a plant of broad range from Labrador to British 

 Columbia, creeping south to the coast of New England and the mountains 

 of New England and New York. Since its varietal name, sparsijiora, 

 is preoccupied in the genus, another specific name is here proposed in 

 reference to the characteristic color of the mature inflorescence. 



The other large group of the Jlyparrhenae which has been treated 

 by recent authors as the subsection Elongatae contains plants of two 

 markedly different tendencies. One group is characterized by strongly 

 divergent thin-edged perigynia which are spongy at base. The other 

 group has ascending plump or plano-convex perigynia which are rarely 

 thin-edged and are without conspicuously spongy bases. Mr. Theodor 

 Holm, who has recently studied some of the members of the first group, 

 includes with them Carex gynocrates and C. exilis, which by most other 

 authors have been placed in the Dioicae. The texture and aspect of 

 the perigynia seem to justify the treatment proposed by Mr. Holm and 

 formerly for C. exilis by Francis Boott; 1 and for the group thus con- 

 stituted Mr. Holm suggests the name Astrostachyae. 2 The other group, 

 with ascending blunt-edged perigynia, may well retain the subsectional 

 name Elongatae, since the characteristic species, C. elongata, C brunne- 

 scens (C. Gebhardii), C canescens (C curtd), etc., were originally 

 included in it by Kunth. 



Mr. Holm, in the paper cited, takes exception 3 to Professor Bailey's 

 recent treatment 4 of Carex echinata, C. sterilis, and C. scirpoides, on 

 the ground that that author had been more controlled by the original 

 specimens of Willdenow and of Schkuhr than by the original diagnoses. 

 That Willdenow's original descriptions do not accord well with Pro- 

 fessor Bailey's conclusions there can be no doubt ; and when we are 

 told by Professor Bailey that C. sterilis and 0. scirpoides are identical, 

 and when he says "the figures of both G. sterilis (fig. 146) and C. scir- 

 poides (fig. 180) in Schkuhr's ' Riedgraser ' are unequivocal," 5 we find 

 it indeed difficult to understand his observations. An examination of 

 Schkuhr's figures shows his C. sterilis (fig. 146) to be a coarse plant 

 with sharp-pointed ovate scales and broad-ovate cordate perigynia with 

 distinct beak shorter than the body. Schkuhr's O. scirpoides (fig. 180), 

 on the other hand, is represented with broad-obloug or elliptical blunt 



1 Boott, 111., I. 17. - Holm, Theo., Am. Jour. Sci., Ser. 4, XI. 205-223. 



3 Holm, 1. c, 212. 4 Bailey, Bull. Torr. CI., XX. 422. 



5 Bailey, 1. c, 424. 



